


The Wolf Has Your Scent

by SheWhoNox



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ancient Arlathan, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Swearing, Time Travel, Time Travel - make everything worse, post-Crestwood, the opposite of time travel - fix it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-04-27 09:24:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14422407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheWhoNox/pseuds/SheWhoNox
Summary: A strange rift north of Kirkwall sends Solas and the Inquisitor back through the ages to a time when gods roamed the earth. Forced to work together so soon after their parting hurts them both, but they must work through their differences to get home. Only things go awry when Fen'Harel recognizes the magic pooled in her palm.





	1. Familiar Magic

**Author's Note:**

> The Inquisitor is my Lavellan from a previous (unfinished) story. The short version is that she left her clan as a teenager after Cullen caught and imprisoned her mage brother. She lived in Kirkwall for ten years, hunting him and being trained as an assassin by a former Crow. She returned and received her vallaslin at twenty-five before her clan sent her off to spy on the Conclave.

They had set out for a village north of Kirkwall, nearly into Starkhaven. There rumors of something akin to a rift opening up and demons spilling out into the plains and Nox had gathered her things and her companions and headed north. They were walking now, surveying the area for anything unusual. 

“You would think a horde of demons would be easier to catch,” quipped Varric. 

“The Veil is thin here. We will find something yet,” said Solas. He walked ahead of them and used his staff to leverage his weight across the uneven ground. It was an act, Nox knew. She had seen him in battle, more fluid and graceful than anyone had a right to be. She’d watched him flourish his staff in ways that closer matched Dorian’s flamboyant style than that of an elven apostate. 

For the hundredth time since that night in Crestwood, she wondered what he was hiding and why she wasn’t worthy of the truth. Familiar bile burned the back of her throat and she drew a breath. She hadn’t wanted him on this excursion. In fact, she’d done everything to avoid him at all times, but when he’d seen her packing, he casually demanded he be brought along. 

“Dorian’s magic is ill-suited to defence. You’ll need a healer.” 

She told him to shove his healing up his own ass. But when it had come time to leave, she found herself telling Dorian to stay back. 

“Just don’t kill him,” he had asked, his mouth pressed to her ear when they hugged goodbye. “It would be a pity if he got off so easily.” 

So they were trudging through Starkhaven together, both pointedly ignoring the chasm that had grown between them. Nox sighed and brought a hand up to wipe her face. Her fingers touched her skin and for a moment she paused, unfamiliar with the smooth skin she had now. It took a second to remember he had taken vallaslin from her. The skin on her brow was unmarked now. 

Perhaps she should have been thankful she’d only had her vallaslin for a few months. She didn’t mourn its loss, especially in light of what Solas had told her. But her bare skin was tainted with the touch of him now. She’d thought removing the vallaslin would bring her closer to the woman she’d been in Kirkwall. 

She’d never felt more distant to her. 

“I have to say, Snow,” Varric said, pulling her from her thoughts. She smiled at his nickname for her and brushed her white hair from her eyes. “You look like a different lady without it.”

She raised a brow. “It was a small marking, Varric. Barely covered my brow. I can’t look that different.”

Varric waved a hand. “For some folk, all they ever saw was that mark.”

Nox looked to Solas and saw him watching her. His brow was creased as it had been since that night in Crestwood, but there were shadows in his eyes. He held her gaze for only a moment before he turned away. 

Of course that’s all he’d seen her as; a slave. 

A heavy silence fell over them. Even Cassandra, who usually lacked the ability to sense such things, was silent as she brought up the rear of their party. 

Let the silence drag, thought Nox. She was tired of playing the part of illustrious leader of the Inquisition. She no longer worked to protect the comforts of her companions. Let them feel her discomfort and realize she waded through it every day.

Her left hand gave a sudden throb, white pain shooting up her arm and straight into her skull. “We’re close,” she ground out and thumbed her palm. 

With her in the lead, they soon found the rift, though this one felt different. Nox had grown up with mages and although she had no talent for magic herself, she’d spent enough time closing rifts to know this one was wrong. It screeched at the wrong frequency. She could feel the magic pressing on her skin. There were demons and her companions slew them as they poured through the rip. But these monsters were larger than any they’d encountered before; huge hulking beasts like primordial versions of the demons she knew.

She wrenched her daggers free of a monstrous Pride demon and lept from the body as it fell. She was close to the rift, close enough to hear its screech inside her skull. Its call was different, like an opera sung off-key. There was something familiar in this magic, though. She could taste it in the air. 

“Inquisitor!” Solas cried, but she kept walking toward the rift. Perhaps if she drew closer, she could remember. 

There was something inside the rift, beyond it. Emeralds glittering in the sun, a pale periwinkle sky. She’d never seen that before. She was close enough now that she could feel the strange gravity of the rift pulling at her. 

“Nox!” 

Her hand was pulled up toward it and she watched a spark fly between it and the rift, like a flash of lightning. Redcliffe, she thought as she spark travelled up her arm. The magic felt like Redcliffe. 

She focused and called the power of the Anchor into herself and took a breath. 

“Vhenan, no!” There was a rush of wind at her back and a pair of arms wrapped around her. The force of Solas’s fade step sent them both staggering forward and then they were falling, tumbling through a cacophony of noise and sound. It was the same out of tune noise as before, but now it pressed on her from all sides. It swelled to an awful crescendo and broke into thick, ringing silence. 

As quickly as the noise had left, it rushed back in and they fell through a canopy of trees. Branches snapped and cut at her arms and face. Solas rolled and took the brunt of the impact as they landed. The air left his lungs all at once and puffed across her face. He held her close for a second longer, one hand tight across her waist, the other threaded into her short locks, cradling her head. 

She was curled against his chest, her brow pressed to the dip in his clavicle that she had once kissed. She used to lick a line from that divet, up his throat to his mouth and he would groan against her lips when she did. 

His hands tightened for a moment - perhaps caught by the same memory - before he released her. Nox rolled away and drew her knees to her chest and shivered. When her heart had stopped thundering in her ears, she looked around.

“Where are we?”

“Varric?” she called as she stood. He’d been right behind her during the fight. “Cassandra?”

She paced the small clearing they were in. There were lush trees all around them and a small creek to the north. She could hear it babbling. Nox crouched and touched the grass and dug into the dirt. The soil was soft and fine. She’d felt it between her toes when they’d approached the rift. The creek was in the right place, too, but the trees were unfamiliar. 

“This is the same clearing we were in, but it’s different.” It was then that she remembered why the magic had felt so familiar. “Redcliffe.”

“Redcliffe?” Solas echoed. He stood a few paces away from her, his hands clasped behind his back, looking at ease with the strange transition. But his brow gave him away. His scar always deepened when he was distraught. She’d seen it before. 

“Back when we first met Dorian. Alexius was working on time travel. Dorian didn’t think it was possible but Alexius sent us a year into the future. One where Corypheus had succeeded.” She turned away from him as she remembered that dark future. She’d never forgotten his reddened eyes or the pain that lurked behind them. 

“I was trying to figure out why the rift felt familiar when you tackled us into it.” By the time she reached the end of her sentence, she was facing him again, incredulous. 

“Forgive me for not wanting to hurl an already unstable magic at something unfamiliar,” he snapped. He closed his eyes and took a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “If this is what you think it is, the question is no longer where, but when.” He took a step towards her. “Could this be the same future you experienced before?”

The question made her head swim. No wonder she and Dorian had agreed to never speak of it; how could you explain living a future that you’d been to in the past? She shook her head. “Red lyrium had poisoned everything then. Nothing would be this … pure.” 

That was the word for it. There was something crystalline about the clearing, the trees, even the air around them. It was like the real world but brighter, sharper. The trees weren’t green, they were emerald; the sky wasn’t blue but aquamarine. 

Solas curled one hand into a fist and then stretched his fingers out. A wall of force hit her and sent her stumbling back. She felt his magic singe the air around her. It crackled like static and raised the hair on her arms. She’d never felt his magic so potently before.

“I - I apologize,” he stammered. His brow creased again. “The Veil feels …” he trailed off as he looked at her. She watched something come together in his mind and saw the change in his eyes. His mouth snapped shut and he swallowed. “Gone.”

“Gone? How is that possible?” She walked to him, but it was clear that he was done talking. His shoulders were hunched around his ears and he leaned away from her when she approached. 

He always had a skill for deciding when a conversation was over. She rolled her eyes and added it to the growing list of Things She Would Never Know. 

“We aren’t going to get back to our time by staying here. We should try to find a city. Maybe they have a library, we could do research. If the magic was Tevinter, maybe we could go west?” She looked up and oriented herself. “Though two unmarked elves walking into Tevinter sounds like the worst idea —”

“North,” Solas said. “We will go north.” He turned and started walking into the forest around them.

Nox stood in the clearing for a moment, blinking and wondering how he figured he could just tell her they were going north. 

Because he’d told her what to do before and she’d done it without hesitation. She didn’t drink from the Well at his behest; she followed his advice at Halamshiral. He asked to remove her vallaslin and she had let him. He used to tell her to disrobe, to put her legs across his shoulders, to lie a certain way so he could have full access to her. 

Nox swallowed hard and shook the thought away. 

“Prick,” she muttered as she followed him into the woods.


	2. Uneasy Companions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nox and Solas continue their trek northward. With no other companions to fill the silence, they must face the rift between them. Or they should.

It was pure chance that she had taken a bow and quiver of arrows to Starkhaven. The Inquisition didn’t have an outpost that far north, so she had packed some hunting supplies in case they needed to rest and eat. A fortuitous chance, she thought as she crept through the trees, her arrow trained on a hare. They’d been walking for two days in the hopes of finding some city. 

She took a breath and steadied her arm. When she exhaled, she released the arrow and pinned the hare to the ground a few paces away. It was a small beast, but she’d found she had little appetite when evening fell and she and Solas were alone in their makeshift camp. Nox pulled her arrow free and slipped it back in her quiver before heading back to the small camp they had made. 

She was surprised to see he had made a small fire and was gathering wood to feed it through the night. 

“I am not so lost in the Fade that I cannot build a fire,” he said upon noticing her shock. His mouth caught on a word unsaid, an endearment he’d once used so casually. She could almost hear in it in the whispers of the wind. 

She swallowed and folded her legs beneath her and began skinning the hare. They sat in silence for some time, only the crackle of burning wood filling the quiet. At last, when she had cleaned the small game and was roasting it over fire, she spoke.

“When do you think we are?” The question was clunky on her lips, but she could not stand the silence and at least their present problem was common ground.

“I have been asking spirits, but they do not understand the concept of time as we do.” He tapped his chin as he thought. “We are in the past, of that much I am sure. There should be villages here, we saw those on the map before leaving, yet they are not. I cannot yet put a specific date on the year.” 

Silence fell over them again as she cooked the hare. She watched him in the firelight, lit in warm oranges and yellows. It reminded her of nights spent in front of the hearth in her quarters, when they had forgone the fluffy feathered beds and instead slept on rugs by the fire. He would trace circles on her back with a lazy hand and they kiss and make love languidly and for a few hours it was like there wasn’t a war or an impending doom. For a few hours she was just Nox and she could be free of guilt and responsibility. His brow had always been smooth in those moments, his shoulders lax, his eyes clear. He would be just Solas.

She pulled the hare from the fire and split it down the centre with her knife. She offered him one half. They ate in silence.

“Solas, why —”

“I will take first watch,” he said, interrupting whatever question was poised upon her lips. “Get some rest,” he said gently. 

Nox watched his shoulders hunch. The conversation was over. She nodded and settled into the grass, too tired to fight a losing battle. She’d never won against his resolve. She rolled onto her side and wished desperately for sleep. Of course one could not just will oneself to sleep, so she laid awake for hours, listening to him breathe, to the sounds of the forest around them. 

She wondered if Varric and Cassandra were looking for them. Had they gone back to Skyhold or were they scouring the plains for her and Solas? Would Dorian know what to do to get them back? Would he even know it was time travel? Without her to close the rifts would the Inquisition survive Corypheus? 

With those fitful thoughts filling her mind, she sank into slumber. She dreamt of Haven and wandering in the snow, a step from death. She dreamt of slipping away from Rook under the cover of night, resigned to never see him again; of contracts from Barter and of blood. She dreamt of being young and angry and bare-faced. 

Nox woke to Solas’s hand circling her wrist. He squeezed her gently but urgently and when she opened her eyes she saw that the sun was rising. He pressed a finger to his lips and she nodded and watched a hawk circle overhead. It screeched twice before flying off. The moment it had taken flight, Solas pulled her up.

“We need to go,” he said, “now!” He grabbed his staff and took off in a sprint, her wrist still in his grasp. He was muttering under his breath as they ran, words of ancient Elven she scarcely understood. “Hunt,” she caught, “danger.” 

She flew with him over roots and brush and could hardly hear over the roaring in her ears. But she was a hunter and knew the sound of bow being drawn. She pulled Solas to a stop and threw herself in front of him. 

The arrow loosed and pierced her back, sending her stumbling into him. He caught her and wrapped one hand around the arrow.

“Why?” he breathed in her ear as the hunters emerged from the trees. 

The hunters spoke in the tongue of Ancient Elven and demanded something of Solas. He poured his mana into Nox, healing her as he pulled the arrow free.

“It’s fine,” she mumbled, “a scratch, really.” Her poor attempts at jokes usually roused a wry smile or perhaps an eyeroll, but he was focused on the elves beyond her, speaking to them in rapid Elven. Over his shoulder, she watched two more approach, bows taught. They were taller than her, more alike to Abelas than herself. They were broad in the shoulder and had arms thick with muscle. Andruil’s vallaslin marked their faces.

Ancient elves, she thought. That would explain the when. 

Two elves approached and lowered their bows. They commanded Solas to do something and he looked to Nox. 

“They’re going to take us to the Huntress,” he said. “I will explain when we are there.” He held her wrist again and there was something implicit in the touch. Trust me, it said. 

Nox wanted to believe that she no longer trusted the man who had broken her heart. She wanted to believe that he held no sway over her. 

She had taken an arrow for him on instinct. She was fooling herself if she thought she was free of him. 

She nodded and he held his arm out. The elves touched his arm and in a second they were all flitting through the forest like the wind itself. It was like when Solas fade stepped but smoother, faster. The forest seemed impossibly large as they flew through it. It twisted out in all directions, no path to be found. They passed sections where the canopy was so thick it blocked out the sun and the ground was cool and damp; other were bright and breezy, filled with butterflies and birds. 

Nox blinked and they were before an impressive lodge made of verdant walls and pillars, like it had been carved from stone and moss and vine. It towered impossibly tall over them, but she had no time to admire for they were being ushered in and led down below ground and into a cell.

“We’re being arrested by Elven,” Nox breathed. 

Solas exchanged words with the elves before returning to sit at her side. He touched her arm. 

“I take it you have figured out when we are.”

She could only nod. 

“You do not speak Elven. I know a spell,” he said and she thought of the last time he’d spoken those words. It wasn’t so different now. 

“Are you going to break up with me again after?” she asked before she could stop herself. As expected, her joke didn’t land well. Sadness tugged at the corners of his mouth. He searched her face which was worse than if he’d looked away in shame.

“The spell will allow you to understand and speak Elven.”

“That would have been useful at the Well.” It was then that he looked away.

“It is passed. Or yet to come,” a strange look crossed his face, almost a smile. “I can cast it, if you like.”

She nodded and watched him shift to kneel before her. He took her head in his hands, his thumbs pressed against her temples. She felt his magic swell and pool into her, like a cool stream on a hot day. She felt the coolness of his fingers press deeper into her head as he tipped her head back and slanted his mouth over hers. He didn’t kiss her, but breathed cool air into her lungs that sang with magic. She swooned at the feeling, at his breath across her face, at the freckles that dotted his cheeks. Their noses brushed as the spell faded and it was too intimate. Nox pulled back as far as the bars would let her.

“I am sorry,” he said and it was like he’d spoken twice. Once in Common and again, in the same instant, she heard, “Ir abelas.” 

“Thank you,” she said in Common and then tried in Elven. “Ma serannas.” It happened without hesitation, as if she’d been speaking Elven all her life. “If we are in the time of Ancient Elves, does the Huntress mean Andruil?”

Solas nodded and watched as Nox stand and pace the small cell.

“So, the gods are real?”

“In a way,” he said and then was silent. The elves from earlier approached again and unlocked the cell.

“Andruil will see you now.”

Solas stood and touched Nox’s wrist, the same unspoken question asked against her skin.

She looked down at where he held her left wrist and felt the strange magic in her Anchor pull. It was magic he had taught her to control, magic he had studied. 

“I trust you,” she said in Common before they were led back into sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much, friends! Hope you enjoyed it. Third chapter is on its way.


	3. Prey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nox and Solas meet the Huntress

They were led to a courtyard with an open roof, where all manner of birds and bug flew about. Bright sunlight streamed in and illuminated the throne wrought of bark and vine that stood upon a dais. Sitting in the throne was an elf, tall and broad as the others Nox had seen. She wore armor of the darkest black, a colour so dark it was devoid of depth. It seemed to swallow light. The armor was cut to her body like a second skin, moved with her as she fed her hawk strips of raw meat, like a living shadow. Nox felt dizzy looking at it.

“Leave us,” the Huntress said to the elves that escorted them and they bowed before leaving the courtyard.

“Two unmarked elves in my lands, poaching my beasts.” She looked up then and cocked her head. Her face was gaunt and ashen with eyes of a deep gold that were rimmed with red. Her eyes narrowed and in an instant she was before Nox, one hand gripping the back of her neck.

The Huntress’s grip was impossibly tight, her fingers like iron rods around her throat. Close up, her skin looked like it was stretched across her bone and sinewy muscle. There wasn’t a bit of softness about her.

“Odd that you look so much like my beloved,” she hissed. “You’re quiet. I cannot feel you.” She tightened her grip on Nox’s neck and craned her head to the side. “Most would have fear pulsing from them in waves. I would be able to taste it. Why are you so, Durlahn sa?”

Nox was scared. Her heart raced in her chest. This strange woman — this god — was handling her like she was some doll. She felt her own fear coil in her chest.

“There was an accident,” Solas said and Andruil’s grip on her tightened. “She was cut off from the Fade when it happened.”

Solas caught her eye and almost imperceptibly shook his head. There was an intense sadness in his eyes as he looked at Andruil.

“A doll with a brain but no feelings,” Andruil mused, twisting a lock of Nox’s hair between her fingers. “You’d be fun to hunt, I think, Durlahn’sa.” Quiet One. “A fair punishment for poaching my game, I think.” The hair in her hair trailed across her shoulder and down her arm. She snatched Nox’s left wrist and brought it to her face.

She heard Solas inhale and the mark gave an uneven thump of power. Andruil dropped her as if she’d been burned.

“That magic reeks of Mythal’s beast. Was that your accident? Some trick of the wolf’s doing?” She pulled back to stalk around the pair and with a swirl of her wrists, a spear appeared in her grasp, so bright and hot that the air around it shimmered. It glowed a pulsing red in the verdancy of the courtyard.

“We do not know the cause of the accident,” Solas said and the spear was brought within a hair’s breadth of his throat.

“And who are you?”

He spoke as if there wasn’t a blade made of darkness and lava pressed to his throat. “You may call me I'tel’melin.”

“Without a name,” she repeated back, spitting on the ground.

“I have found nothing I would pledge myself to.”

Andruil twirled her spear away and paced. “A nameless Person and a construct. No one will miss you, I think. I’ll have you released into my woods.” She whirled around and planted the spear in the ground and the sheer force of her strike buried it deep in the grass. The grass around it dried instantly to a faded yellow. “Let us see how far you get before my spear finds you.” She smiled, but it looked more like a sneer, as if she’d learned to grin by watching apex predators stalk their prey. Her teeth were stained red around her gums.

“Do you think poaching small game is a greater crime than stealing a god’s magic?” Solas took a step towards her, looking as calm as he always had. “Would you rob him of his just punishment?”

Nox could only stare at the back of his head and wonder what in the Void he was playing at.

Andruil’s sneer turned into a snarl and she stomped her feet into the grass. “But I caught you first!” she screeched and her tantrum shook the ground. “You are my prey, not his! That upstart will not have you!” She plucked the spear free and brandished it. She licked her lips and it was like madness had consumed her.

“You would risk your mother’s wrath for us?”

That sobered her. Her snarl dropped at once and she shifted her weight back, rocking onto her heels for a moment as she considered his words. When she rolled back on to her toes, she was shaking, her mouth twisted into a grimace, her hands balled into tight fists. She screamed and twisted her wrist like she was grabbing a fistful of dirt. The ground beneath Nox and Solas gave way and they sank into the cool dirt and were dropped unceremoniously back into their cell beneath the earth.

There was a moment of stunned silence before Nox snapped.

“What were you thinking, egging her on like that?”

“We are not safe in her company. I would rather be passed along than be hunted here.”

Nox ran her hands through her hair. “Passed along to the Dread Wolf is safer than here?” She huffed, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “The Dread Wolf.” She looked down at her hand and thumbed the Achor.

“This magic is his?”

“It would appear so.” A shadow crossed his face, but it was gone before she could draw a breath.

Nox shuffled her feet and frowned. There were too many things to think about, too many questions. If she believed that they were in the time of Arlathan, if she believed they had just spoken to Andruil, Goddess of the Hunt, if she believed that they would be delivered to Fen’Harel…

She folded her legs beneath her and sank to the ground. “Why did she call me quiet?” Her mouth curled at one corner. “I’ve never been accused of that before.” It felt good to make light of their situation. It made it all seem a bit less surreal. Then she thought of what Varric would say to the accusation and her heart clenched.

“Without the Veil, magic stirs in the air, presses upon us all. Magic is intrinsically linked to thought and feeling and without the Veil, the feelings of those who are connected to the Fade are projected beyond their bodies. It is like an aura. You do not have one.” Solas looked down to where she sat with her knees drawn to her chest. “I imagine is it odd for them; they’ve never met someone like you before. Like meeting a Tranquil.”

“Great,” she muttered. She’d heard him say it before, but it had been hypothetical then. Now she was the prisoner of someone who thought she was void of emotions, an empty shell of a being. A construct. She didn’t want to dwell on the implications.

“Why did you say your name was I’tel’melin?”

Solas shifted the grip on his staff to lean against it. “Names hold a great deal of power here. We would do well to keep our true names secret, lest they be turned against us.” He paused and caught her eye. “Or so I am told by the spirits. Your name is not Elven and it would only garner more suspicion.”

Nox looked away from him. “I have a Dalish name, you know,” she said quietly. “I gave it up when I left my clan, but it is mine.”

“I did not know.”

That was unsurprising. And not just because she kept her true name so close to her chest no one beyond her clan knew it. But for all their nights spent speaking in hushed tones, either in tents pitched in the middle of the wilderness or else curled up in the rotunda, the conversation so rarely turned to her. She asked him questions of the Fade, of spirits, of the ancient things he had seen and he’d been happy to talk for hours about his experiences. She could sit and listen to the cadence of his voice. But he never asked of her experiences.

She looked up at him, standing tall and proud in their damp, earthen cell and realized this was how it had always been. For all her titles and troops, he had always held the power between them.

He looked at her, his head tipped down slightly, a question in his eyes, but too proud to ask it.

“Names have power, Solas,” she said as she turned to lean against the bars. She settled and laid one leg out in front of her, letting her hands fall to her lap. “I think I’ll keep mine safe for a while longer.”

For a moment it was like she was one of the People and she could feel the displeasure pouring from him in waves. Even with her eyes shut, she could picture his face, smooth but for a dimple in his brow and a lurking frustration in his eyes.

Good, she thought. Let him stew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think Solas would be keen to use his name in the time of Arlathan. All my elven translations are from either [ Project Elvhen ](https://archiveofourown.org/series/229061) or [ this translator ](https://lingojam.com/ElvenDAI). Big thanks to both of those!


	4. Patience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who doesn't love getting locked in cell with your ex for an indeterminate amount of time?

It was difficult to mark the passage of time underground. Nox found herself wondering how dwarves didn’t miss their meals or get lost in their work. Maybe they did. She really only had surface dwarves as friends and she could only count one of them as a true friend.

They were fed once a day, Nox figured; a cup of steaming broth that tasted like bones and marrow and detritus. She found it inoffensive but Solas’s face curled into a grimace every time it was unceremoniously shoved into their cell. 

Nox was no stranger to waiting and had spent some time in her youth wasting away in Kirkwall’s prison. After Barter had broken her free and taken her under wing, he made her sit in shadows until her legs cramped, or else had her trail a target for a week without break. She had patience in droves. Maybe enough that it surprised her apostate companion. 

It wasn’t the time that bothered her. It was the silence that swelled between her and Solas. She could imagine passing the time by spinning wild tales with Varric or uselessly flirting with Dorian. By the Void, she could never manage a week with Sera. At least with Sera they would have broken out by now. But with Solas there was only uncomfortable silence and unsaid accusations. He sat on the single pallet and pressed his fingertips together, his head bowed in meditation. His shoulders had been hunched since they’d been dumped back in the ground and brokered no room for discussion. 

Nox had been willing to live with that for a few days, but as the cups of broth piled up and the silence stretched on and on, her desire to live with the silence grew thin.

“What is taking them so long? Is she just going to let us rot in here?” she asked. She gathered all their cups and began stacking them into a house. 

Solas did not open his eyes as he spoke. “They are Evanuris. They live for millennia. A week to them would be insubstantial, a blink of an eye.” 

Nox groaned as she carefully balanced one cup atop another. “Yet we are not. We will both wither away to nothing before she comes to a decision.” 

He made a small noise, neither of agreement or disagreement, something like a sigh. She paused her building to glance at him. Torchlight bathed his skin in warm hues and cast shadows under his eyes and cheeks. The scar on his forehead looked deeper in this light. His chest moved slowly with each breath he took, but otherwise he was still; no twitch of his fingers or curl of his toes. Even behind his lids, his eyes seemed motionless. 

“If you think you can get out of talking to me by meditating, you’re mistaken.” When he gave no reaction, she set the cups aside and stood before him. He didn’t open his eyes at her approach. She clasped her hand behind her back, striking the pose he so often took when they were alone. “Solas, I want to know why.”

Still, he kept his eyes shut but his brow creased for a moment. Still, he was silent.

“You can’t keep hiding from me,” she said.

That got his attention. His eyes snapped open and he looked up to fix her with an even stare. His eyes narrowed when he noted her stance.

“I am sitting here, am I not?”

“You know what I mean.”

“What would you have me say?” He shot up. She’d left little room between them so he towered over her, his bare toes an inch from hers in the dirt. “It was a reckless mistake on my part. I should not have been so selfish. You have heard me say this before.” The heat in his voice dimmed after his first explosion and was filled with weary remorse by the end. 

“I want to know why it was reckless, why was it a mistake” she insisted. “We are a millennia from our time, Solas, and dangerously out of our depth. I won’t have secrets between us any longer.”

“To know the truth would only cause more harm.”

“Then let my selfishness hurt you!” She broke her pose to jab a finger at his chest. “You never gave me that choice.” 

He looked away from her, but he did not deflate. She could feel the shame radiating off of him. Good, she thought. The silence between them filled, Solas avoiding her gaze, Nox refusing to back down. It dragged on and on and her frustration brewed and boiled until it spilled out of her in a rush.

“I don’t know why I fucking bother,” she hissed and spun away from him to stand as far away as the small cell allowed. She kicked over her stacked cups like a petulant child and glared at the wall. 

“Because we are in a foreign land and time. Because you are hurt and scared —”

“Don’t,” she snapped and it cracked like a whip through the cell. “Don’t tell me how I feel. Don’t tell me why I feel what I do.” 

“I am sorry,” he said quietly. 

“I don’t want your apologies. I want answers.” 

Solas turned his head away and frowned and she felt the silence threaten to engulf them again.

“No, no! We are going to keep talking. You are going to tell me why I wasn’t worthy of the truth!” 

He sat on the pallet and turned away from her completely. His knuckles were white where they gripped his staff. 

Nox ducked and grabbed a cup, hurling it at his head for lack of any other weapons.

“Fuck you.”

The cup stopped an inch from his head and clattered onto the pallet. 

“Why did you take an arrow for me?”

The quiet question caught her off guard and she paused as she bent to grab another cup to launch at the back of his head. 

“Because I can hate you and still care for you.” She took a breath. “It’s all I can do because I will not forgive you.” 

His grip tightened so much she heard the wood creak under his grasp. It was the closest thing she’d gotten to a reaction from him. And that was progress. 

The lock on the cell clicked open and one of Andruil’s elves put two cups on broth on the floor. They both froze, wondering if the other was going to move first. When he didn’t shift, Nox sat in front of their dinners and turned her back to him. 

It was a petty move, but she was past the point of playing fair. She drank her broth quickly and then laid on her back and counted the rough stones that lined the ceiling of their cell. 

Between the quiet sounds of his meditative breath and the mundane task of counting stone, Nox drifted off into a dreamless slumber. It was rare for her to have a night that wasn’t filled with nightmares of things to come or awful memories of things past. Before Crestwood she’d spent most nights with Solas, both in the Fade and without. With his help she learned to slip into consciousness in the Fade, a trick not usually managed by those without magical talent. Sometimes they simply walked and he taught her about the history of Skyhold, showed her those who had sat upon its throne before her. Else they would remain in her chambers and touch and kiss and rut. Some nights it was tender adorations and softness. Others, when a battle had brought one of them near death, it was desperate and wild, no words beyond choked I love yous as they held each other safe. Her favourites were the nights when they had just enough Antivan brandy to grow bold and brave and they’d laugh and giggle together at the mishaps, at the foreheads banged against bed posts and muscle cramps and all the strange noises a body could make in a silent room. Sometimes they’d wake to find their bodies already warm and pressed together and there would be a small sliver of bliss where she could feel him with her hands and her mind. Half-asleep they would move against each other, languid and slow lest they wake up. 

She had less of those dreams now. 

Dreamless sleep was the best of all possible options.

Nox woke slowly and stretched her arms overhead, arching her back off the ground until she felt her back pop. Unlike some of her Dalish counterparts, she’d grown quite accustomed to the comforts of a fluffy feathered bed and luxurious sheets. Being Inquisitor came with perks and one of them was a multitude of pillows on her bed. It had been some time since she’d slept bare on the hard ground. Even the Inquisition tents had thin woven pads to put under their bedrolls. She sat up to see Solas sitting against the bars at her feet, a cup of cold broth in his hand. 

“I see my plan to starve you into speaking failed miserably.” She rolled her neck and caught the smallest hint of a smile tug at the corner of his lips. “Any news?”

“I heard a few of her servants talk about how the lands above have grown dark and twisted. They think the ground is poisoned.”

Nox thought back to the fables she’d been told as a child by firelight. “Is this Andruil going mad? From hunting things in the Void?”

“I fear so,” he said in hushed tones. “It is why I believe we are safer anywhere but here.”

“Could you fade step us out of this cell? We could try and make our own way north.”

Solas fixed her with a sad smile. “I am flattered you think I can outmaneuver a would-be god. But I am afraid we are at her mercy.”

“Flattery was not my intent.”

“I know.”

Nox hooked her hands under her thighs and drew her knees up. They were speaking, at least. It was something to perhaps not dash at the earliest opportunity. Making eye contact was a far stretch from where they had been when she’d fallen asleep. 

“Why?” she asked quietly. 

He closed his eyes and sighed.

“It’s a simple question.”

“One that does not have a simple answer.”

“It appears we have all the time in the world, Solas. As long as I am living the fables of my childhood, nothing you say could shock me.”

Again with the sad smile upon his lips and the storm clouds in his eyes. “I wish that were true.”


	5. Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nox and Solas are finally permitted to leave

If her previous guesses had been correct, they had been in the cell for sixteen days before they were released. Her tower of cups had grown into a magnificent monument in the corner of the cell, nearly as tall as her with spires and archways. She was just placing the final cup at the very peak of the tower when the cell opened and a single elf stood before them both. He glanced at her strange marvel of architecture and the ghost of smile crossed his face.

Huh, she thought, the ancient elves had a sense of humor. 

“You will be travelling with the Huntress. We leave shortly.” He left the gate open and turned on his heel to leave. Nox faltered for only a second before following him. 

He led them through the estate, past the courtyard where they had spoken with Andruil, through corridors that had no walls and were instead open to the forest around them. Nox slowed as they marched across a great walkway that had no ceiling and no walls.

She remembered the forest looking lush and full of life when they’d first arrived, but the plants were withering now, black and curled in upon themselves. There was no sound of life here, no buzz of insects or call of birds. The ground looked blighted and she could easily picture the jagged shards of red lyrium that would rend the ground in two. A shiver of dreadful familiarity ran down her spine. This was what Corypheus’s awful future looked like. This was the land robbed of all life and light and filled with dread and death and decay. 

In two weeks the verdant grounds had died. 

She thought of people living on this land watching their food turn grey and black-veined before their eyes. Their water would be tainted, there would be no unspoiled game. Not when life was already so far gone. Did they eat it? Did they have a choice? She remembered the people they found in Redcliffe, those poor souls who had been fed so much lyrium that it grew within them, sharp red crystals breaking their bones and skin until they were consumed by it. 

He didn’t touch her, but she felt Solas’s presence at her side and it pulled her from the awful memories. His face was just as clouded as hers and they shared a glance before continuing on. 

“Have the elves ever seen decay happen so quickly?” she asked in Common under her breath.

“No,” he breathed and he sounded so pained that her hand twitched to grasp his, to show him some small comfort in this strange and dying land. But then she remembered Crestwood and half-truths and all her frustration came rushing back. She closed her hand into a fist and clenched until she felt her nails bite into her skin. 

The trio came to a halt at the entrance of a grand room where a score of elves milled about. They spoke quietly amongst themselves and Nox noticed how they all shifted about as they stood, like pacing animals, like their Goddess who could not keep still.

The Huntress stood before an eluvian, outfitted with her midnight spear and a bow that looked to be made of charred bones and sinew pulled taught. She bounded up to them in three long strides despite the room being as long as the entrance hall of Skyhold. Watching her move was like watching reality fold slightly to accommodate her and snap back into place as one foot landed before the other. 

It was nauseating to think about. 

“Mother has requested me. She wants to see my strange prisoners.” The darkness around her eyes had deepened and as she peered down at Nox, she could see veins of red in the gold her of irises. 

“My slaves have the fastest arrows,” she whispered in Nox’s hear, her lips brushing across her skin. Her breath was hot and smelled of decay. “You will be dead before you even think of escaping.” Andruil’s nails raked along Nox’s skull as the Goddess ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe my beloved would like you as a gift. You remind me of one of her creations.” 

In an instant the sharp nails that held her were gone and Andruil was standing before the eluvian once again. Nox fought down the shiver that threatened to make her hands shake. 

Andruil pressed a hand to the surface of the mirror and stepped through, her people following. Nox and Solas were last save for two hunters who followed them closely and pushed them ahead when they hesitated. 

Nox had only travelled through an eluvian once before and it still shocked her that it felt so normal, like stepping through a door frame. She always expected a ripple of magic or a weightlessness that would make her stomach churn, but it felt so … easy. 

The Crossroads looked nothing like what she remembered. It was bustling like a market at noon with elves flitting about between mirrors, some alone, some burdened with crates or scrolls or barrels. It was sunny in the Crossroads which was the most unexpected. She felt the warmth on her skin and readily as if she’d been on the beaches of Antiva. 

“We could slip away now and hop through any of these,” she whispered to Solas in Common.

“The eluvians cover the entirety of Elvhenan, we could end up anywhere.” 

“Anywhere sounds better than here and in her company.” 

Solas’s face tightened. “I believe Mythal will be able to help us.” 

The elves behind them nudged them along with spears as when they slowed and the conversation was forgotten.

For how strange it all was, Nox couldn’t help but stare at the elves they passed, all going about their daily lives. They wore beautiful robes or silk and velvet, nothing like the gowns she’d seen in Orlais. These weren’t contraptions made of stiff wires and boning; these fluid and flowing like a stream woven into fabric. They swayed when they walk and seemed to almost drift into nothingness as it trailed behind them. 

If they weren’t in gowns, they wore robes fashioned to look like fern leaves, green and vibrant, woven together into stiff overcoats or pauldrons. Their legs were covered from ankle to thigh in woven leather straps, their tunic opened at the side to show a sliver of hip as they moved. 

It was surreal and wonderful and made her intensely aware of how bulky and odd her armor must have looked in comparison, all rough hide and hammered metal. She shifted and grimaced when she realized she’d been wearing it for almost three weeks straight. It wasn’t uncommon to be travelling for weeks at a time and it would be ridiculous to bring different armor for different days, but at least when they travelled normally she could shuck off her outer layers and let her skin breathe. On fortuitous trips they would find a stream and they would wash their inner layers and Iron Bull would be the first to dunk someone head first into the water. After that, it was a free for all, Cole splashing around, Sera wildly thrashing about as Nox tried to pull her into the cool water. Vivienne would tsk and call them all children and Dorian would flick water at her in response. 

It felt too personal to take her armor off in the cell. It felt too close to disrobing under different circumstances. 

The people milling about parted for Andruil’s procession, bowed their heads and waited for her to pass before they resumed their tasks. Nox saw some people with vallaslin, some without. Those without wore flashier robes and carried less, usually followed by a handful of marked elves that carried their goods. 

It was a shock to see what Solas had described in action. A small part of her had hoped he had interpreted the memories of spirits incorrectly. What had he said? They were reflections of emotions, hardly concrete truth. But he’d been right about this. And it stung a little. 

She’d seen the injustices of city alienages, she knew what it was like to live as a second class citizen. She may have skirted about in the shadows in Kirkwall, but she never truly knew the comfort of walking freely through the streets or drinking in a tavern without fear of some drunk flat-ear following her out. The Dalish told themselves they were free, but how was hiding from human cities freedom? Not a single person in her clan had ever seen a dwarf. They’d never moved beyond their safe vantage point just beyond Kirkwall. That wasn’t freedom. It was segregation with a different name. 

Even the Inquisition held her hostage. She was their leader, sure, but she was never permitted to act as she chose. Josephine tried to train the elf out of her, Leliana made her think without her heart or conscious. Cullen wanted her to see mages as nothing more than reckless, sentient weapons. 

She frowned in the false sunlight and dropped her gaze to the ground, soft like dried clay between her toes. No good dwelling on the past now, she thought with a shake of her head. Or the future. Because she knew why her advisors moulded her so. The Inquisition was more than just Nox. It was the fate of the world and one false move could cost them everything. She understood. She truly did.

It didn’t make it any easier to bite her tongue. It made her long for days at sea with Rook where there was no one else for miles and she could say all the strange and stupid thoughts that came to mind. And Rook, her sandy-haired, dark as an Antivan smuggler would just listen. 

There relationship had never been serious; she’d been so young when they’d first started working together. But she found herself thinking fondly on those times. Lazy days spent on the water as they sailed for Rivain, basking in the sun. There had been no assumptions with Rook, no silly hopes that maybe they would be something more. He was human, she was an elf. They worked dangerous jobs for even more dangerous people. There were a thousand reasons it would have never worked and that was fine. It had been stress relief. They’d both known that from the beginning.

She cast a sideways glance at Solas and saw him looking at her and it was the first time since they’d passed through the rift that his face was warm. There was a smile at the corner of his lips and the yellow sun cast away the shadows that usually clung to his eyes. He inclined his head to her.

“It is good to see you smile,” he said quietly.

She opened her mouth to respond, but found they were standing before an eluvian and the guards behind them were tapping her calves with the blunt end of their spears to keep her moving forward. Instead, she swallowed whatever she was going to say and stepped through the mirror. 

What lay on the other side was almost blinding, a room wrought from diamonds and sunlight. There were walls, surely, but they were ethereal and white and hazy. The floor was marble, so polished that she could see each buckle of her armor clearly in her reflection. The hall stretched out before them, the walls lined with airy curtains that billowed in an absent breeze. The centre of the hall was elevated a step, a long walkway that widened into a dais upon which sat a table made of marble and gold. It was laden with fresh fruit and crystal pitchers and gleaming goblets of silver. There were tables on the sunken ground on either side of the walkway, made of a less gleaming material, but still pristine. 

The great double doors behind the main table opened and a woman stepped out, followed by a dozen elves. She was tall and lithe and dressed in a gown of creamy white that flowed behind her like a stream. Her face was serene and open, golden eyes warm like a hearth. 

“My darling huntress, how are you?” she asked in a voice like sun-warmed honey. 

“Mother,” Andruil snapped. “Why have you requested me?”

Mythal frowned and it was like the room had been filled with clouds. “Is it so wrong for a mother to want to see her kin?” 

Andruil narrowed her eyes and marched up to Mythal. Andruil’s shadows and the dirt caught between her toes and stuck under her nails cut a painful contrast to her mother’s pristine warmth. 

Mythal sighed and it was like a summer breeze passed through the room. “Your brother tells me that your lands grow bleak. I was worried.”

Andruil hissed and spat on the polished marble. “Brother should learn to keep his secrets.” 

Mytha’s faithful murmured at the display, but she silenced them with a hand. “It comes from a place of love,” said the All-Mother. “Come, daughter. Let us eat and rest. Tomorrow we will talk with your brother.” 

Nox looked to Solas. His face was more broken than she had ever seen, tears welled in his eyes and there was a fierceness behind the sadness that was staggering. She watched his throat work as he tried to swallow and when Mythal turned and led her daughter and her people from the room he let out a shaking breath that deflated his shoulders. He held himself up with his staff, like he was afraid his legs would not support him and his hold on it was white-knuckled. He looked so desperately sad. He was unaware to anyone around him. He tried to clear his throat, but it caught and the small sound that came out was a hopeless gasp. 

Nox’s heart clenched to see him so distraught. There had been few times she’d seen him openly emotional, fewer still were the times when that emotion was sorrow. She could handle anger, she’d seen it; she’d seen him furious and disappointed and helpless. But even when he spoke of losing her, even when he stood full of regret and apologies, he’d never been this harrowed. 

Her hand reached out, lifted to touch his arm, words of love on her tongue. She still loved him and her stomach churned to see him like this. Bile coated the back of her throat and she froze, her hand hovering an inch from his arm. 

No.

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t open that wound that had just begun to scab over. She wanted desperately to hold him, to wipe away his tears, let him shake and sob until he was spent and calm. She wanted to murmur in his ear nothings that would soothe his soul. 

But he’d made his choice. He’d pushed her away. He told her to focus on their goal and nothing else.

Even though her heart hammered in her chest, begged her to take his hand and wipe his tears, she closed her hand into a fist and dropped it to her side. 

She followed Andruil’s servants from the room and left him alone in the room of gold and marble and light. 

Behind the pack with no one behind her to force her to keep step, Nox wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed into her hand.


	6. All-Mother

Nox’s tears had dried by the time she finished walking through the immense corridor that lay beyond the great hall. Mythal’s people had dispersed into various rooms and for a moment Nox thought she was alone in the vast halls of the All-Mother.

There was a sound at her back, a gentle stirring of air and then a hand on her shoulder. She spun to see Mythal looking down at her, her face still and serene yet it held none of the warmth she’d seen in the previous room.

“Come with me, prisoner of my daughter.”

She followed the Goddess through a grand archway carved of softly gleaming jade and then again through a door made of white wood. They entered what looked like a study, but instead of the warm woods and leathers of Skyhold, it bright and airy with windows on three sides. The same curtains as before billowed in the room, undulating in the warm breeze. There were chairs and benches of the same white wood as the door, tables of soft birch and white candles of a thousand different sizes burned. The only wall without windows had a single door in the centre and was otherwise covered by an immense bookshelf that carried on upwards as far as Nox could see. A delicate ladder made of gold and inlaid with jade and diamond leaned against the wall.

The room was oddly comforting for something so bizzare. Nox followed Mythal up to the second door and paused when she turned around.

“Wait here, Somniar'din. I will get you when we are done.”

Nox cocked her head at the name and watched the door close behind Mythal. She who does not dream. Not entirely true, but she could appreciate the intent. Nox stepped back to glance up at the bookshelf again, mesmerized by the titles that were foreign to her for a moment then translated in the next.

She heard the door behind her open and close and turned to see Solas standing there, framed by the gold inlay of the door. His eyes were red and he looked anywhere but her. The breeze tossed the curtains, the soft cream brushing against his toes as he stood, frozen in place.

“Are you,” okay seemed like such a poor platitude. Of course he wasn’t. She couldn’t think of anything else to say so she closed her mouth and let the breeze fill the space between them. She ventured a step closer to him. His gaze remained on a spot on the floor between them. She took another step then another until she was certain her toes were in his line of sight.

“Solas,” she breathed, “what’s wrong?”

Finally his gaze lifted to her and it was familiar. That mix of remorse and guilt and desperation she had seen so clearly in Crestwood and again every time she asked him why.

“Some other truth I’m unworthy of?”

“I am sorry, vhenan.”

Nox sucked in a gasp. It was not easy to hear such heartbreak behind something that used to be said with such joy. She heard nothing but roaring in her ears. Her heart — her stupid, stupid heart — leapt into her throat at hearing it. He still cared, she thought and with the same breath, don’t get your hopes up. What had she said earlier? Should could hate him while still caring for him? He could do the same.

Only he didn’t hate her. She’d tried to rouse it out of him, shoving him away in Crestwood, picking at the wound incessantly. She’d begged him to call her a dalliance, to say he’d just been stringing her along, but he hadn’t. He couldn’t.

Nox turned away from him and collapsed onto a bench, drawing her knees up to her chest. It was easier when she hated him outright.

He looked at the door that went deeper into the study and then sucked in a deep breath.

“If we are truly in the time of ancient Arlathan, I cannot keep this from you any longer.” His voice was so quiet is was almost lost under the rustle of the curtains. He hadn’t moved from his spot, his gaze was still trained on her only now his eyes were dark and focused, willing her to just listen.

“I have not been entirely truthful. I feared you would not understand if you knew the truth.”

Nox didn’t move, didn’t speak, lest she break whatever trance had fallen over him. His thumb ran along his staff, his nail worried a nick in the wood from a fight with the Templars. He was silent for a long moment before he drew a breath and seemed to still his resolve.

“Mythal will see you now.”

Nox blinked and saw the door had opened. A man was standing in the frame, his shoulders back and his hands loose at his sides.

She felt the momentum of Solas’s speech slip from her hands. No matter how she chased it, it would not return and she watched his shoulders hunch and his face go cold. No! she thought.

Solas kept his head bowed as he passed the figure and there was a long moment before Nox managed to get her feet to move beneath her. She approached the room as if dreaming, the magnitude of the moment she had lost ringing in her ears. They’d been so close! Her heart was hammering in her chest and she wanted to grab Solas by the shoulders and shake him until he finally said what had been torturing him for so long.

She felt a gaze on her and she looked up to see the man who had opened the door openly staring at her.

He was tall in the way all ancient elves were with broad shoulders. He had hair of a deep brown swept back into a bun at the back of his head. The sides of his head were shaved down to bare skin. He was looking down at her with undisguised curiosity, his long nose almost upturned. Mythal’s full vallaslin marked his face, the branches a muted brown similar to the colour of his hair.

He made a show of looking her over, his dark eyes raking across her shoulders and down her hips and he leaned in and smirked.

“Pretty little construct,” he murmured and it sent shivers down her spine. He clasped his hands behind his back when she turned her head up to glare at him. His eyes shone with challenge as he loomed over her.

It was the look in his eyes that broke her. Her lips parted on instinct and she almost rocked up onto her toes. It was all so familiar, so painfully familiar. How many times had she stood like this with Solas? How many arguments had ended like this? Any second now he would reach out and hold her chin and kiss her, all the passion from their debate rerouted into his lips crashing against hers.

She swallowed and sank onto her heels and looked away from that curious smirk that had only grown in her distress.

“Stop toying with the prisoner,” Mythal chided from within the chamber and the man righted himself.

“I’ll be seeing you, Somniar'din,” he said and the name rolled off his tongue. He chuckled to himself and turned, leaving her to blink and panic alone.

She looked across to where Solas stood.

All colour had drained from his face. There was panic in his eyes as he looked at her.

Nox swallowed and walked into the chamber, letting the door fall shut behind her. A thousand questions piled on her tongue and Solas would not look away from her and the dimly lit room felt like it was suffocating her.

“I want to know who you truly are,” Mythal said and for a moment no one spoke. She stepped toward Solas and lifted his chin. “You think I would not recognize my own general? I gave you your body, wolf.”

“I am sorry,” he breathed, leaning his head into her hand. Her other hand came up to curl around his ear and she held him until he looked her in the eye. His gaze was so soft and filled with adoration that Nox felt her cheeks flush. She felt like she was intruding.

“I could not save you,” he said at last and Mythal stroked his head.

“Tell me who you are, Sominar’din,” Mythal said when it became clear Solas would speak no longer.

Nox looked away from where they held each other. She fought the urge to shrug. A simple question, but one that did not have a simple answer.

“I am Nox, from Clan Lavellan. I was born in the year 9:16 Dragon, a few millennia from now, I believe. I am leader of the Inquisition.”

“Inquisition,” Mythal mused, “what an interesting title you have. And how did you come hold the Dread Wolf’s power in your palm?”

“She discovered the Foci,” Solas said and a look from him told her not to volunteer any more information.

“You wish to return to your time?”

“Desperately,” Nox blurted out.

“I will aid you in that endeavour. But my wolf will want to examine the mark on your hand.”

Nox watched as Solas’s hand reached up to grasp Mythal’s, his long fingers wrapped around her wrist and he held it to his cheek. His eyes slid shut and he sighed. It was the most content she’d seen him in months. Perhaps ever.

Her stomach twisted at the sight.

“You may leave, Sominar’din. I will have chambers drawn up for you.” Mythal nodded in dismissal and turned to face Solas. She touched her brow to his and the two spoke in hushed tones.

Nox turned and nearly sprinted from the room, the glaring light of the study a welcome respite from the suffocating dimness of the chamber. She leaned against the door and sucked in a few rapid breaths, forcing her questions and hysteria down until she was truly alone.

There was an elf waiting for her in the archway and he bowed his head and led her through Mythal’s estate, comfortable with her panicked silence.

The rest of the estate was much like what Nox had already seen: bright, gold, airy. The whole building had a sense of floating through the clouds. She passed through every hall in a trance, the whole walk blurring into one vast corridor of cream and honey and gold.

The chambers drawn up for her were small but bright. A bed was pushed against one wall and opposite the door was a grand window that overlooked a courtyard filled with blossoming trees and bushes. Her guide left her and she stood, shocked, in the centre of the room for a long while.

Solas was an ancient elf. That was a truth she could manage. Solas had gone into a deep slumber and awoken to find the Veil in place and world changed.

Solas had been a lover of Mythal’s. That was harder to take. She’d seen that look of softness on his face before, in early mornings out in the field when they were snuggled for warmth. Or she’d seen a degree of it. She’s never been the recipient of the full force of his adoration, palpable as it had been in that chamber.

She sucked in a breath and repeated the phrase a few more times. Solas and Mythal; Solas and Mythal were lovers; Solas had fucked Mythal.

The vulgarity made it easier to grapple with.

But there was another truth that skirted along the edges of her mind, one that she didn’t dare think of yet. The implications were too much.

With practiced skill, she shook the thought free of her head for another day and began methodically shedding her stiff outer layers. The mundane task helped settle her racing mind.

“Are you no longer a prisoner?” His voice was warm and she could hear the smile in it.

“I suspect this room is just a pretty cage, Solas.”

She turned and saw a long-haired elf leaning against the doorframe, one hand hooked into the sash at his waist. One of his dark brows quirked up.

“Interesting you should know my true name, Sominar’din,” he said and he spoke her name with the same lilt he’d used before; one step from teasing, a glance away from flirtation.

Silently cursing herself for getting caught up in the familiarity of his cadence, she turned and sat on the edge of the bed and swallowed the panic that was beginning to bubble in her stomach.

She looked him over now that there wasn't an audience. He was wearing robes of white and grey and gold, all pinned and draped across his shoulders to show a slash of his chest. She saw freckles there that she had counted once.

His face was mostly the same, pale with full lips and downturned eyes of a stormy grey. A small frown hooked at the corner of her mouth when she realized his nose was slim and straight and did not have the bump or crick she had come to love. Fen'Harel got himself punched in the face, clearly.

His vallaslin gave her pause. It was so deeply strange to see one on him after he had begged to remove hers. It wove across his brows and down his cheeks, boughs of a beautiful tree that signified enslavement.

He shifted his shoulders to puff up his chest, apparently keen to let her eye him a bit longer. Pride indeed.

She bent and began unbuckling her greaves, rolling her ankles when they were free from confinement. It was nauseating to look at him; like she was seeing double, like Solas was dressed into someone else’s clothes. Like the elf before her was Solas possessed. And that was terrifying.

Fen’Harel hovered at the door, his dignified posture slumping slightly when she looked away. “I’m here to examine the magic you bear.”

He took a step into the room and whatever thin shred of calm she had desperately been clinging to slipped from her grasp. His gait was too familiar, there were too many deeply conflicting feelings vying for the chance to either strangle or scream at him. There was an uneasy thump of affection in her heart at the sight of his eyes finally without darkness in them, looking at her with nothing but the open curiosity he’d once held for her.

She shot up from the bed and held her hands out before her. “No,” she took a breath and steadied her voice. “No. Not now.”

He froze before her and tilted his head to the side. “You are a prisoner of Mythal’s.”

“I will not be subjected to poking and prodding against my will.” The idea brought up parallels to when Solas had crouched over her in a cell beneath Haven and she would not be the subject of his study any longer.

“You can’t refuse the All-Mother.”

“Are you going to run to her and tell on me?” Nox snapped and it shut him up for a moment. “I wear no vallaslin. I am free.” She shoved past him and marched into the hall, no destination in mind, only to be free of him and all the conflicting feelings he raised within her.


	7. Questions

Nox marched through the grand halls of Mythal’s estate, letting her feet carry her until the foaming, frothing confusion in her mind had settled and she no longer felt she was a single glance away from bodily harm. 

If she had thought Solas was arrogant before this was a shocking wake up call to the type of man he’d been previously. It was odd to see him so young. The hair gave her pause. She supposed she’d always pictured him bald, even if she’d never given those thoughts voice. 

She remembered suddenly how close he had been to telling her the truth, that the things he had been keeping from her for so long had been on his tongue. Her stomach clenched at how close they had been to finally being on equal ground. But the moment had come and passed and she could not stomach the thought of finding him now. Not when she had seen the way he looked at Mythal. Not when she was still so rankled by seeing Fen’Harel. 

She felt sun on her face before she realized she had walked outside. While Mythal’s home was light and breezy, there was something different in the quality of true sun upon the skin. She after two weeks underground, Nox tilted her face up to it happily. 

She wasn’t truly outside, she realized, but in an open grove filled with moss and grass and small white flowers that swayed in the breeze. Halla were wandering the grove, munching on the grass, bleating softly to one another. Nox slowed and approached quietly, thinking of the halla her Keeper had kept when she was a child. 

These animals were grander than the ones she knew, with glossier coats and antlers of pure white that twisted in smooth fractals. One halla nosed her hand as she approached and made a small noise of displeasure when her hand proved empty of snacks. 

“Sorry, friend,” she mumbled, touching antlers that felt like velvet. It was comforting to have some small piece of home, of familiarity here. She maybe wasn’t as attached to the halla as some of her Dalish counterparts, but it had been some while since she’d had a quiet moment with an animal she wasn’t trying to kill. It was peaceful.

For a moment.

Then Nox heard the grass rustle behind her and she looked out the corner of her eye to see an elf standing beside her, white hair long and flowing down her back. Her hands were clasped before her, almost disappearing in the long bell sleeves of her soft green dress. 

Nox didn’t have to see the small silver circlet on her brow that curled out from her temples to know she was standing next to Ghilan’nain. But she turn and took a moment to glance at the goddess she’d been marked for. 

The circlet was fine and inlaid with crystals, a set of twirling and twisting antlers wrought of silver sprouted from the band where it sat against her temples and reached a fair distance past her head, arcing back in a soft curve. 

“I did not expect to see the strange construct standing among my herd,” the goddess said softly, caressing one of the halla on the neck as it approached. 

“I did not expect to come here,” said Nox she wasn’t sure which instance she meant. All of them, she supposed, right back to entering the Temple of Sacred Ashes. She thought back to when Deshanna had sat her down in the baths as the sun set and her Keeper washed her hair and cleansed her skin. Then, bare in the moonlight, Deshanna had peered at Nox’s empty face and meditated. 

“You were so lost,” she had said, “lost to violence and hate. And now you have returned.” 

Nox wasn’t sure her vallaslin had held such grand meaning. Deshanna had never been overly poetic and she always suspected that her vallaslin had been granted simply for the colour of her hair. But it made her think of the tales of Ghilan’nain and she turned to face the goddess fully.

“You were one of the People before becoming a goddess. What was it like?”

Her face changed at the word goddess, a quick flicker of something behind her eyes, a twitch of her ears and then it was gone. 

“Being one of the People? It was like you could imagine. I hunted, I worshipped the gods I now walk among.” She paused and withdrew her hand to slip it back into her sleeve. “As for apotheosis, it was … unique.” And then she was silent. 

All ancient elves had a thing she ending conversations early, it seemed. 

“I see you are not marked for Andruil. But you were a hunter.”

Ghilan’nain’s lips pursed into a small pout of distaste. “Yes, I was a hunter, but I was not a slave. I am Andruil’s beloved, not indentured to her.”

“Is that what a vallaslin means here? A life of service?”

The goddess drew herself up to her full height and for a moment it was like shadows had begun to cling to the edges of her. The halla fell silent. 

“Those who have the honour of serving the Evanuris should be proud to serve their gods.” She didn’t raise her voice, but it rang in Nox’s ears all the same. 

The skies cleared suddenly and her face was serene once again. 

“It is a good life to serve us.” 

Nox doubted that. But she kept her lips tight and waited for the goddess to take her leave. 

Alone and stuck with revelations she didn’t want, she itched for her twin blades. She had been of a similar mind to Iron Bull when it came to processing difficult emotions: hit things until it felt better. She would run through drills Barter had once taught her, the mindless repetition letting her mind sort through whatever it was that needed sorting. She’d also discovered that if she looked like she was busy people wouldn’t bother her. 

Of course she blades and arrows had gone missing shortly after being dragged to Andruil’s estate so all hopes of stabbing something were dashed. So that left her with plan B. 

There weren’t shadows to lurk in at Mythal’s estate, but there pillars she could hide behind and archways that would shield her from view. It had taken the better part of the day to find the elves that were carrying soft cloths and small baskets of dried flowers and oils. She trailed behind them, away from the courtyard and throne room, into a space that looked like something from a dream.

The gleaming marble of the estate’s floors melted away into smooth grey stone flecked with white and gold. The archway above her was gold and what lay beyond was lit by sunlight that filtered past the large, waxy leaves that filled the canopy. It was both indoors and out. There was a waterfall on the far side of the baths, foamy and inviting and pools dotted the ground between it and the archway. Some pools were covered in a thick steam, others had thin sheets of ice clinging to the rocks that surrounded it. 

The elves she had followed deposited their goods and departed and Nox was shocked to find the baths empty save for her. She padded over to the waterfall and found the pool it emptied into a lukewarm temperature, possibly warm above, but cooled in its descent. She stripped out of her sweat-stained and dirt-crusted linens and slipped into the pool. 

She was not a tall elf and when she stood in the pool it came to nearly her chin. She sucked in a breath and sank beneath the water. 

The crash of the water was a dull roar below the surface. It was the kind of dim noise she’d come to love about sleeping in the mountains. It was just enough noise to let her mind unfocus and think without panic. 

She was walking among the ancient elven gods. She had spoken to Mythal and Andruil and Ghilan’nain. She had seen Fen’Harel. She had spoken to the one who betrayed them all. And that traitor would become her beloved some day. 

It was … not an easy concept to swallow, but after a long moment of repeating it back to herself, Nox felt as though she could think the words without a crazed laugh tightening her stomach. 

Fen’Harel would become Solas. Solas was once the Betrayer, the Traitor, the Trickster. 

She thought back to previous conversations, to casual references that had blown right over her head. Everything he said he had learned in the Fade was a side-step of the truth. He hadn’t seen memories of the Evanuris in the Fade; he’d lived it.

She thought of his conversation with Abelas and ‘our People.’ He had never aligned himself with the Dalish, yet openly admitted his fellowship to an ancient elf. 

She had been so blind, so stupidly blind and in love and _stupid_ to have not noticed it sooner. 

Anger that had been set aside at being unceremoniously disposed of flared up and she yelled, bubbles pouring from her mouth. The truth, he’d said. What a joke. 

Her lungs burned from lack of air, but she refused to rise. She’d done it before; sink and scream below the surface until her lungs and heart and mind were empty and she could face the day. How many times had she done it at Skyhold? 

She felt a shadow cross the pool, a faint change in the temperature of the water around her, and she stayed below until she felt her diaphragm twitch. Only when her lungs were on fire and her chest felt like it was about to burst did she push up and break the surface. She sucked in a breath and kept her back to him. She didn’t need to turn to know who stood behind her; she could make out the tense line of his shoulders and curve of his bowed head from his shadow. 

“How did you find me?”

“You have no weapons with which to practice,” Solas began. “You used to hide in the baths at Skyhold when you wished to be undisturbed.”

Her private bath chamber at Skyhold had been just far enough away from the entrance to her chambers that she couldn’t hear someone knock at the door. A clever way to gain a moment’s respite from the Inquisition and claim ignorance when asked.

“And yet you disturb me.”

“We need to talk.”

She looked over her shoulder to fix him with a stare. “You think?” She turned to face him fully. He stood at the edge of the pool, dressed in finer linens than those he’d arrived in. His tunic was a soft grey and was belted around his hips by a thick band of light leather. 

She disliked being eye-level with his toes, so she pulled herself from the pool and forced him a step back, standing bare and dripping in the sun-dappled room.

His gaze fell to the floor just past her feet.

“Look at me, Solas. You’ve seen me before, don’t get bashful now.” Her voice was harsh, but she would not temper it. “I have nothing to hide.”

The double meaning of her words made him flinch, she saw it shiver across his shoulders a moment before he raised his eyes to look at her. 

“I suspect you have questions.” His voice was soft, nearly lost under the roar of the waterfall behind them. 

“Questions?” she repeated, her voice brash in the soft silence of baths. “No, Solas, I’ve managed to fill in the blanks myself.” She ran a hand through her hair and tugged. She swallowed a scream. “Was there anything from your mouth that wasn’t a lie?”

“I never lied to you—”

“Lying by omission is still lying,” she snapped and he had the sense to look ashamed. 

Silence swelled between them, furious on her part. She closed her eyes to try and reign in her desire to throttle him. Her hands clenched a released. 

“This is the truth I wasn’t worthy of.” She shook her head when he opened his mouth to speak. “I have walked physically in the Fade, I have been guided by the spirit of a woman I watched die, I have fought a man who thinks himself a god and lived and you think I wouldn’t believe you?”

“How could you have? It would be just my word against a world that would label me apostate, nobody.”

“I trusted you word at every turn.”

Solas’s face tightened. He opened his mouth to speak, but fell silent. He looked to her and his eyes were stormy. “I am sorry, vhenan.”

“Don’t call me that.” It cut too deeply to hear it. He couldn’t have loved her, not really, not if he hadn’t trusted her. Vhenan was another lie she’d bought into. When Nox closed her eyes, she felt hot tears slip down her cheeks and she wiped at them furiously, wishing she hadn’t seen the absolute anguish on his face. She tried to remind herself that it wasn’t real, that he wasn’t actually tormented by her sorrow. 

“Did you really do it?” she asked when she had reigned in her tears. “Locked all the gods away and destroyed all of this?”

He frowned and took a half-step towards her. “All this is not perfect.”

“I know that, Solas. I know what a fucking slave looks like.” He flinched back at her words. “Was there no other option besides throwing a tantrum and locking everyone in their rooms?” 

“Do you honestly think I had not explored every other possibility?”

“No, because you dedicate yourself to a path a refuse to stray from it. Nothing changes you.” She thought back to their first shared dream, of Haven and his soft confession in the snow.

“You change everything.”

It took a moment to realize that the man before her had spoken, not some fragment of her memory. She gulped and looked away from the pain in his eyes.

“How? How are you any different now than you were when the Breach first appeared?”

He sucked in a breath and ventured a step towards her again. She lifted her gaze to him and saw his eyes were bright and earnest and he reached out to her. 

“You have changed me in more ways than I can count, Nox.” 

It was the use of her name that caught in her chest. He so rarely used it, deferring to Inquisitor in public and vhenan in private. 

She swallowed and let him take a step closer. His brow was deeply creased, his eyes dark with sorrow and regret and sadness. She’d seen the look before, seconds after her eyes would flutter open after a kiss, the same darkness. There had been encroaching distance then, Solas backing away, his hands raised between them. Now he ventured closer, but with the same slow hesitancy. 

Nox froze. She wanted to step toward him, to wrap her arms around him and hold him until the storm in his eyes had cleared. She wanted to believe him. She desperately wanted to believe that she had changed him, that she had caught the Dread Wolf’s heart. 

But she knew better. The man before her was a traitor to the gods, a trickster. And he had lied to her at every turn. She thought of nights wasted with him, of time lost as she daydreamed about him. She thought back to every decision she had made since the Inquisition had formed and saw only his influence and it made her sick.

She stepped back from him, shaking her head. “No,” she murmured. She turned and ducked to collect her linens, which had been replaced with a soft robe of cream and gold. 

He hadn’t moved.

“Nox, wait!” he said as she stepped away. 

“Why? Maker, Solas, you had every chance to tell the truth. You’re a god? You fucked a goddess?” He flinched. “Andraste’s tits, this is a mess because of you.”

“I am not a god. The Evanuris, they are not either.”

“Semantics. And a weak argument.” She tried to move back to the main hall of the estate, but he caught her left arm and held her.

Pain shot up from her palm and burned up her arm like lightning. Stars flashed before her eyes and the pain solidified something that had been formless in her mind. When she spoke, her voice was barely more than a whisper. 

“You caused the Breach?” 

He dropped her as if burned. His frown deepened, but he didn’t argue. 

“Every person we lost at Haven, every causality, it was you? Corypheus is your doing.” It was an accusation and snapped across his face like a physical attack. He sagged and the guilt in his eyes turned flinty. 

“I never meant for the Breach to happen, you must know that.”

“No, Solas. I don’t know anything about you anymore. Apparently, I never did.”

Thinking of Haven hurt, anguish for surprising force sucking the air from her lungs. On it heels was fury and she launched herself at Solas, fist pulled back and then smashing across his face. 

“That’s for Flissa,” she hissed and drew back again, this time knocking him to the ground. She pressed a knee to his chest and hit again, drawing blood. “For Aden and Seggrit and Minaeve and Threnn.” Each name punctuated by a fist, she didn’t stop until his face was a bloody mess and her knuckles were bruised and broken themselves. She sobbed as she hit him and he did not try to defend himself. His hands were limply at his sides and when she pulled back she saw tears clean two trails through the blood on his cheeks. 

“Fuck you, wolf,” she hissed down at him. “Fuck the hole you tore in the sky and the demigod you created and all your stupid stories.” She sucked in a breath. She wanted to stop crying, she wanted to be only furious and make him feel just an inch of the pain she felt, but it was all tangled; anger and sorrow and guilt all knotted together until her insides felt like a churning ocean, stormy and dangerous. 

She wanted to say something scathing as she left, but she could hardly trust her voice. She wanted to say she hated him. She wanted to tell him that the second they returned home, he was to leave and never return. 

Her left hand gripped his shirt and pulled him up. His eyes gleamed from the bloody mess of his face. He didn’t even look angry; he looked resigned, defeated. Tears still trailed from his eyes, whether from pain or sorrow, she couldn’t tell. 

With a cry of her own, she pulled back and hit him one last time, her fist going straight for his nose. It cracked under her knuckles and she thought of his crooked nose and how it wrinkled when he scowled and how she’d come to love the bump on its bridge. A sob escaped before she could catch it and she dropped him. With shaking hands, she drew on the robe and left him in a bloody mess on the floor of the baths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I suspect you have questions," has always made me righteously furious and I thought Nox would feel the same way.


	8. Wolf

Nox had all but collapsed into the bed she’d been given. The confrontation had sucked any energy she’d had and left her numb and shaking. She’d dreamt of near death in Haven and isolated marches through night, clutching her side. Of praying for a quick death. A voice had called to her that night, “ _please,_ ” it said when the darkness encroached and she sank to her knees. A backwards glance showed a trail of red disappearing into the void, trenches in the snow carved by her long-numb feet. “ _You must keep going._ ” Nox had awoken facedown in the snow and with a cry pushed herself to her feet.

Presently, Nox gasped awake. She’d thought the voice was that of Barter or Rook or maybe Falon’din. But the dream had been vivid and she’d heard it in the shell of her ear and felt it slide down her spine.

She slammed her fist into the soft bedding and swallowed a scream. Solas had saved her then, pulled her from the Fade to push her onwards. It seemed that every step she’d taken had been by his influence. She punched again and hissed. Pain flared across her hand and she brought it to her face to see angry, mottled purple bruises across her knuckles and flecks of dried blood stuck in the creases of her hand. She flexed her fingers a few times and watched the blood flake off onto the sheets.

A knock at her door forced her upright and as she stood she remembered that it had been a full day since she’d last eaten. She was past hunger and now deep in the throes of nausea. Her stomach rolled as she pulled open the door.

There was an elf holding a tray and after a moment of hesitation, Nox stepped aside and allowed them to enter the room. They set the tray down on a table pushed against one wall and with a small nod, left.

Odd treatment for a prisoner.

Nox approached the tray and saw it was laden with food and teapots and cups. It was more food than she would eat in a sitting and all of it looked Orleasian. Frilly cakes with glassy icing, sausages wrapped in flaky dough and cooked until golden, little pastry pouches of spiced apples and nuts. There was a pot filled with amber coloured tea and Nox poured a small splash into a cup.

It was heinously sweet, like thin honey and nothing else and she poured the rest of her cup back into the pot. There was at least some fruit, though it looked nothing like the small berries and hard pears she’d grown up with. This was brightly coloured and full, like a child’s version of what fruit should look like. It was almost comically perfect. She plucked a soft-skinned peach from the basket and bit and it was pure summer sunshine. Juice dripped down her chin and wrists.

The dough-wrapped sausages proved to be delicious as well, pleasantly spiced with something warm and earthy, although the exterior erupted into a mass of crumbs as she took a bite. She found she was voraciously hungry for solid food after surviving on broth for a number of weeks.

She was biting into her second peach when there was another knock at the door. Again, she pulled the door open to see Fen’Harel standing there. He was dressed in soft robes of dove grey and gold, belted at the waist by a thin chain. The neck of the robe was open and displayed a wide wedge of his chest and she rose a brow at it.

“Morning,” she said warily.

“I came to examine your mark.” His hair was loose about his shoulders and fell in soft waves. It was darker than she had thought, a deep brown that glinted amber and orange and ruby when the sunlight from her window illuminated it.

Nox took another bite of the peach and he leaned in, snatching up her free hand to run a thumb over her bruises.

“You should see the other guy,” she said once she had swallowed.

“I did. I’m afraid his nose will never be the same.” 

That filled her with a strange sense of pride and she hid a smile behind the fruit.

“I can heal this for you,” said Fen’Harel.

“Don’t bother. I want people to know it was me.”

He smirked at her then, thumb tracing the curve of her knuckle. “A mark of pride,” he muttered, but didn't release her hand. “May I?” he asked, tapping the back of her hand with his thumb.

Nox shrugged by way of affirmation and took another bite of the peach.

He turned her hand over and simply studied it while she studied him.

His face took on a contemplative quality she had seen so many times before, usually when Solas was pouring over tomes and scrolls. She let her gaze follow his vallaslin up around his cheekbones and across his brow. She noticed his ears were pierced in many places, little golden rings snug to the skin or small gems. A few were connected by delicate strands that looked to be closer to spider’s web than metal. It made her think of her own ears and the night she’d drunkenly insisted on Rook giving her an earring to match his. It had started as a joke, but had grown into something she loved, if only for the joy of flipping the fetisization of Dalish ears on its head. Her own ears were filled with hoops and gems and bars and all different metals and tones. Nothing as immaculate as what he had.  
  
With his gaze focused down on her hand, she could see the fan of dark lashes that framed his eyes.  
  
He touched her hand gently, his fingers barely brushing the scar that swirled in her palm. She felt the nerves in her hand all jump to attention, like they were pulled to him. He passed his hand over her palm again, slower this time and she felt a crackle of energy snap between them. His brow furrowed and he brushed his thumb against her palm.  


Green light pooled in her palm and he hummed in thought.

“What magic is this?” he murmured.

“Rift magic.” She watched his brow crease at the term. “Rifts are places where the Veil is torn.”

“The Veil?”

“Has—” his true name nearly spilled from her lips, but she caught it, “I'tel’melin not spoken to you?”

“Yesterday. He told Mythal that you are both from a time far beyond the present. And that much is different in your time.” His fingers swirled for a moment and the green light turned into a small mote of flame. He raised a brow and withdrew his hand and the flame sputtered out. “Interesting,” he breathed.

Nox ducked her head to look askance of him and the corner of his mouth pulled up into a grin.

“You’re mark acts as a focus point for my magic. I can cast into it, but it does not sustain itself.” He called magic into her hand again and something snapped in the air. A flash of pain shot up her arm and flared behind her eyes. She snatched her hand up and closed it into a fist, swallowing a cry of hurt.

His face was one of pure concern, so far removed from the swagger she’d seen yesterday. “It hurts you?” His hand hovered where it had been, fingers twitching around the empty space.

“Not always.” Nox thumbed the scar until the last prickles of pain subdued. “I don’t think it likes being in a body that isn’t connected to the Fade.”

He considered that, rocking back on his heels, letting his gaze fall to her. “What’s that like?” There was an intense curiosity in his eyes, one she recognized.

“Normal? I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

His frown deepened and she felt like he was trying to see the absence of the Fade around her.

“I can dream, you know,” she said after a moment. She dropped the peach pit into the basket and wiped her hands on her robe.

"Then it appears Sominar'din is a misnomer."

That made her think and she cocked her head to one side. "What did you do to earn the name Dread Wolf?"

From her understanding he got the name when he locked away the gods, but he was still at Mythal's side. And there was his vallaslin, marking him for the All-Mother.

"I locked away the Old Gods who preyed on the People. I strike dread into the hearts of my enemies."

Nox almost laughed. He was so young and tough and brazen. She could easily imagine what Solas would say about his younger counterpart. She did snort and it made him grimace.

"Most people who strike dread into their enemies don't need to announce it." She couldn't help but snicker then. He was such an odd mirror of Solas, all puffed chests and smugness. And sure, Solas could be just as smug as he wanted to be, but it was a quiet pride. This was brash and vocal and loud.

He looked away from her then and wiped his hands on his robes. “I’ll resume my studies tomorrow.”

"Wait," Nox caught his arm, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, it's just where I'm from when people talk like you do they usually get cut down."

That gave him pause. His grimace turned into a thoughtful frown and he blinked at her. "Why?"

"Arrogance, mostly. A certain level of humility is expected of our leaders." Maker, if that wasn't a lesson Josephine had drilled into her. She snorted when his delicate grimace returned. Of course Pride found humility distasteful.

"And if they don't show humility, they are overthrown?"

Nox quirked her brows up. "Only if they can't back up their claims." How many Orlesians hiding behind masks had called her traitor and blasphemous? How many Fereldens claimed her to be nothing more than a Dalish savage? People had doubted and vilified her at every turn and with Josephine guiding her politics and Leliana managing her reputation she had shown them all. Even when her advisors had relinquished control and let her pass judgement from her ill-fitting throne, she had proved to be as sane and civilized as those who would criticize her. More so in some cases

She had never expected being Inquisitor to be easy. She had never expected it to happen in the first place. But her conflicting feelings about her title always gave her pause. She hated bowing to shemlen ideals of the Maker. She loved having a hand in giving mages a better life. War table meeting spent politicking made her head spin, yet an afternoon spent with her Spymaster, discussing who of their opposition would most benefit from an assassination was an afternoon well spent.

Fen'Harel considered that, watching her face as he did. Solas had never been shy when he admired her, not even when they were in the field and surrounded by others. He would let his gaze trail over her, hungry and heated, but never lewd. He was too careful for that, too filled with caution and his own secrets to truly let go.

She was happy to find that for now, the thought of Solas and his secrets didn’t fill her with indignation. As she’d hoped, blood and battle had soothed the raging parts of mind.

“You were a leader in your time?”

“Yes. There were many who opposed me, but I weathered their threats.” She frowned and her mind turned to those who were left behind — ahead — and how they fared. “I only hope all that we worked towards has not be lost in our absence.”

“I have difficulty imagining you leading an army.” Fen’Harel looked her over. “You are quite small.”

“I’m fast.”

“And you wield no magic.”

“I’ve done pretty well with a couple of swords thus far.”

His brows rose at that and he leaned back to cross his arms. “I should like to see that.”

Nox met his gaze with a raised brows. “You want to fight?”

“I said I wanted to watch, not participate.”

The tip of her tongue pressed against her front teeth and she smirked. “Scared?”

His mouth snapped shut and a muscle worked in his jaw. He righted himself from his slouch and stepped to her. “Hardly.”

He towered over her, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent down to smirk at her. Oh, this was familiar. She tilted her head up to him, returning his smile. She folded her hands behind her back and mirrored him.

“Then get me a couple of daggers.”

His lips pressed together into a tight line and he exhaled sharply through his nose. He grabbed her arm and took her from the room, leading her through grand halls and corridors. His grip on her was firm, but gentle as they walked through the estate. They came to a heavy marble door and beyond it was an armory like she had never seen before.

There were hundreds of weapons here, spears made of pure sunlight and lighter than air; longswords engraved with strange arcane symbols; bows of bleached wood and arrows tipped in gold. It was breathtaking.

Nox let her fingers trail across the leather-wrapped handle of a dagger. The blade was delicately curved and wrought of a gleaming metal, like iron but shot through with gold. It looked like wood grain when it caught the light. It was lighter than she expected, but the blade was longer than she was used to; accounting for the longer arms of ancient elves, she figured. She rolled her wrist a few times, letting the blade slice through the air. There was a guard at the top of the handle, curled away from the hand into a set of horns and when Nox pressed a finger to one, found they were sharpened to a deadly point.

She grabbed the blade’s sister and found Fen’Harel waiting for her at the otherside of the room, leaning on a longsword. There was a door at his back, but when she tried to walk past him, he stopped her with a hand to the shoulder.

“I’m not going to fight you when you’re wearing a robe.” He nodded to a chamber beside them and she saw rows upon rows of armor, all gleaming in torch light. She touched the nearest one, expecting to feel polished metal beneath her fingers. It felt like cloth to her, the smoothest silk, fluid as she pulled it from the bodyform.

“What is this?” she asked, trying to remember what Abelas had worn. She wondered if he was here in this estate.

“It’s dawnstone woven into fabric,” said Fen’Harel as she pulled it fully from its place. It looked like she could pull it on like any other piece of clothing; trousers for the lower half and a tunic for the top.

She turned from him and pulled on the lower part of the armor. It felt like silk against her legs. The armor was far too large for her, the bottom of the trousers pooling around her feet. She felt magic sweep across her and then they shrunk to fit her form. Making a small noise of amusement, she bent her knees and found that it moved easily with her. She tapped her thigh with her nail and it _‘clinked’_ as if it was metal.

Nox looked over her shoulder and saw he was watching her with his tilted to one side. With a quirk of her brow, she turned away from him and slipped the robe from her shoulder, letting it fall to the ground at her feet. She pulled the tunic over her head and goosebumps ran across her skin. The fabric was cool to touch and hung loosely off her frame for a moment before it shrank and tightened and she was outfitted like the ancient elves she’d been in Mythal’s temple.

It felt good to be armed and armored again, safe. Her shoulders rolled down from where they’d been hunched and she felt like she was free to fill her skin again. She hadn’t realized how much she’d shrank away from the strangeness of this ancient world until she felt herself unfold.

She grinned and turned to face Fen’Harel. “Shall we?”

One of his auburn brows lifted, but he led her through the second door and out into a courtyard, the floor of which was soft earth, dirt that clung to her toes when she walked. Sunlight streamed into the space from directly overhead, casting long shadows over the contours of his face.

The space was modest, no statues of Mythal, no fountains, no stained glass effigies. It was small enough that they wouldn’t have to yell to speak to one another, but Nox could maneuver around him with ease.

He planted his sword in the soft dirt and gathered his hair back from his face, securing it with a thin band of leather and the simple motion made her pause and press her lips together. A few strands fell free of their bondage as he plucked the sword from the ground, framing his sharp cheeks in a deep auburn.

Oh, she thought as he flourished the sword. She tightened her grip on her daggers and tried to force the blush away from her cheeks.

They paced for a moment, a slow circle around the centre of yard. His steps were fluid and sure, hers were measured. They both waited, eyes waiting for the first hint of attack.

Nox had patience to spare and wanted to see his hand before he played it. She wondered if he fought like Solas. She’d watched him fight before, and had even sparred with him at his insistence. They’d had a run in with Venatori mages and she’d been blindsided by spells that left her paralyzed or stunned or rooted to the ground. She had never fought mages before the Inquisition and felt helpless in the face of their magic. Dorian had been her coach first; no one better to teach you to kill Tevene’s than one of their own, he’d said.

They’d cleared a patch in the courtyard and he taught her to evade spells that could be sidestepped, how to shake off magical fear and disorientation. It had been humbling and brutal; she’d often left in worse shape than she’d arrived in, but was always laughing. Dorian had that effect on her.

Solas had joined their sparring a week later, saying that variety would help her adapt and then she was dodging his walls of ice and fists created from the Fade. He had pushed her more than Dorian, truly testing her abilities rather than gently coaching her. It left her beaten and sore, but better equipped to face those who would cut her down.

It was then that she’d discovered that he flourished nearly as much as Dorian and that he left his flank exposed when he figured he had won. Defeating Solas was all about letting him think he’d gotten the upper hand.

Nox danced forward and made a half-hearted swipe at his left side, which he easily parried. He slashed left and she stepped away from the blade.

They continued their slow circle.

“Are we dancing, Dread Wolf, or sparring?” Nox asked.

He chuckled and loped forward, thrusting his sword to her. She twisted away and sliced at his exposed side. Before her blade could make contact, his forearm slammed into her chest and sent her stumbling back.

“You were saying?”

She smirked. Nox took two quick strides into his space and slashed, right — left, then danced back. He followed her, reaching out to cut a long arc from left to right. She hooked her foot around his ankle and, over-extended and off balance, he toppled to the ground. She pressed a knee to his chest and held a dagger across his throat.

“So, Wolf —”

She arced through the air and landed with a thud a few feet away. Magic singed the air around her. She pushed up to her feet just as he stood and the ground between them folded and he was standing before her a second later. The tip of his sword an inch from her brow as she crouched in the dirt.

He let the tip of his sword drop. She grabbed a fistful of dirt and tossed it into his face, leaping away when he swung wildly. He was still wiping the earth from his eyes when she darted to his flank and stabbed.

“You’re fighting dirty,” he said as he swung for her.

“You want to win on a technicality?” She parried his attack. Feinting left, she ducked right and stabbed up into the side of his chest. He twisted around her blade and slammed the pommel of his sword into the middle of her back. She stumbled and fell, gasping for breath in the dirt. She felt the ground shift as he stalked to stand in front of her.

Rather than wait for what was surely to be a little quip about honour in forfeit, she pushed up onto her knees and tackled him around the calves, sending them both sprawling into the dirt.

She clambered up his chest and, flipping one dagger to hold it by the blade, aimed to press the sharpened guard to his eye.

His sword came up and locked against her daggers. They fought against each other, blades stuck, panting with effort. Nox lifted from her knees to put her whole weight behind the attack. Fen’Harel groaned, his lips curled into a snarl and he pushed back against her.

She released her right dagger and let it fall to his chest, using her free hand to punch his wrist. His arm spasmed and he dropped the sword and Nox knocked it aside with her dagger. She drew the blade back overhead and slashed down.

He caught her arm as it rushed toward his face and twisted, rolling them both over and pinning her arm to the ground above her head. He was grinning, sweat glistening on his brow, hair stuck to his cheeks and neck.

“Don’t celebrate. You don’t even have a blade to finish the job.”

His free hand twisted in the air and a thin dagger made of ice appeared in his grip.

Nox glared up at him. Varric had never accused her of being a gracious loser and she wasn’t going to start now. She rolled back onto her shoulders and planted both her feet against his chest. With a grunt, she kicked him back and kicked the longsword away. He rolled and caught himself on the balls of his feet, looking more lupine than ever. He bent and scooped up her discarded dagger.

They had no choice but to get close now; there could be no dancing around, waiting for someone to strike. Nox ducked away as he slashed left and she managed a superficial cut on his arm. He backed up a pace and touched the bloody slash.

“Impressive.” He brandished the dagger again, his free hand held behind his back, so very graceful and poised. He stabbed forward then slashed up when she tried to duck away. Nox leapt back from the blade and it just barely scratched the armor across her stomach. He pressed forward again, forcing her back another step, and again. When he tried to stab again, she caught his arm and held it away from her. His other hand went to grab at her, but she pressed the tip of her blade to his chest.

She smirked, some jibe on her tongue, when she felt him tap her side with his own blade, now in his left hand, the grip reversed. One of his brows rose up, his full lips pulling into a grin.

“A worthy fight, Sominar’din.”

“Not bad for someone who needs magic to get the job done.”

He chuckled and stepped back. She lowered her blade and accepted the other one when he offered it to her handle first.

“I did not expect you to draw blood,” he said as he collected his longsword.

“How else would you know who won?”

“You did not win.” He leaned on his longsword, one foot hooked across the other, looking bored and loose despite the sweat that stained the front of his robes and blood that leaked from his arm. “I seem to remember I had my blade buried in your ribs.”

“Yes, and I had mine at your solar plexus. Who do you think would have died faster?”

He considered that. “I’ll be content to label it as a draw.”

Nox nodded.

“Perhaps we can revisit this duel another time?”

She looked down at the beautiful daggers in her hands, felt how steady her grip on them was. She felt the safety of the armor against her skin and how liberated she felt in it.

“I’d like that,” she said and offered him a smile. His head tilted to one side as he looked at her, his hair, now completely free from its confines and delightfully disheveled, tumbling across his shoulder.

“Ooh, are we playing with the construct?” Andruil’s voice cut through the clearing like a knife and a second later the ground was folding beneath her feet. Nox barely had time to get her daggers up as the spear made of shadow sliced through the air. She deflected the blow and the spear dissipated into motes of darkness that reformed in Andruil’s palm.

Andruil stabbed again and Nox felt the hiss of magic on her skin. The spear skidded against a barrier and Nox looked up to see Solas approaching, one hand raised and glowingly faintly blue. His face was white with anger.

“No fun,” Andruil whined, yet she stabbed again, forcing Nox to step sideways from the blow.

Andruil looked worse. There was more red in her eyes, in the corners of her mouth. Her armor was now streaked with veins of red that pulsed like a heartbeat. Nox couldn’t hear any singing, but there was a whine, high-pitched and barely audible, that grated on her ears.

The huntress stabbed at Nox again and she grabbed the shaft of the spear and jammed it back into Anduril’s gut. Hot pain flared in her palms, worse than when she’d been foolish enough to try and touch fire, worse than the flares of the Anchor. She dropped the spear and fell to her knees in the dirt, crying out as she cradled her hands.

Distantly, she heard the scrape of a blade against armor and Fen’Harel telling Andruil to leave. Shaking, she opened her hands and saw angry blisters across her palms, skin burnt away to muscle, blackened and raw. “Shit,” she said and she muttered it again and again. She could feel her heartbeat in her hands. She could see shards of red stuck in her wounded flesh like glass.

Solas dropped to his knees before her and took her hands in his in silence. He cast rapidly, ice to cool the burns, spirit to heal the flesh. With an aching slowness, he lifted each shard from her palm and held it aloft in a small barrier.  

“Shit, shit, shit,” Nox gulped for air, trying to listen for the song Varric had warned her about. “Shit, Solas, here? How?” How was red lyrium here? How long did Andruil have before she turned into something monstrous like Corypheus? Her heart reached in her chest, pounding against her ribs like a caged animal, rabid and wild. She was gasping for breath, panicked sobs that made her whole body shake. Red lyrium, here, among this much raw magic. They had no sense of time, they would never notice the change. Redcliffe, the shards growing from Fiona, from the chests of those she had met in the village. She had heard the edge of it in Andruil’s voice, the echo, the wave, like a thousand shards scraping along the lungs, like a voice calling from the bottom of a well. That kind of corruption in a god —

Her skin felt too tight —

“Look at me,” he said sternly, his voice low and steady. “Hold a moment. Breathe.”

His held her hands in his and squeezed. She looked up at him, blinked through tears and saw his face, calm and his eyes were clear. She sucked in a breath and held it until she could let it go without sobbing.

“Good,” he murmured and rubbed his thumb along her wrist. “Take another breath, slowly.”

She nodded and took a shaky breath. Clarity returned to her in bits and pieces, coherent thought slipping back into her skull and with it came the memory of a similar time, pacing the corridors of Skyhold, half out of her mind with grief and anger and Solas taking her hands and speaking to her in soft tones. It had happened only once before, when the few mages who survived Kirkwall had sought refuge in Skyhold. They were so few, five total and they had brought Tranquil with them, for Tranquil could be counted on to follow orders and move quickly and fight if needed.

“We welcome you all,” she had said from her dais. Then the mages had parted the Tranquil stepped forward and she’d fallen to her knees before she even realized. Her brother, her magically talented and skilled and joyful brother, so full of quick jibes and teasing, the brother who, when the Templars descended, told her to run, stood before her, a sunburst upon his brow.

Grief had come first and Josephine had quickly whisked away all other parties. Then came anger. And when Arris told her that the Knight Captain had thought him a threat, rage had taken hold. She’d been cruel to Cullen then, all fists and bitterness and insults. She’d thrown his lyrium kit at him, watching him shudder when that fine blue powder spilled across the flagstones. She’d called him an addict, a sheep, a thoughtless, mindless shell of a man. She’d tried to kill him, like she’d tried for ten years in Kirkwall. She’d pressed a blade to his brow, drew blood, asked him if she could carve his brain from his skull. She would have done it if not the strong arms of Iron Bull pulling her from him and shoving her outside.

She’d hurt Solas then, too, a reflex when he’d tried to soothe her. But he had held her still and spoke softly until the red seeped from her vision.

She raised her gaze to him again and his brow was furrowed.

“Feel the dirt beneath you, the air against your skin.” He watched her as she took another breath and she felt herself settle back into her body. “It’s all right,” he said softly, but there was a wryness in the corners of his mouth.

“Thank you,” she whispered and her heart twisted. It would have been easier to hate him still.

He didn’t answer her, but instead looked past her to where Fen’Harel was standing.

“I fail to see how sparring is going to help you get back to your time.” His voice was cold and harsh, snapping like a whip. His grip on her was deadly.

“It was mostly harmless.” Fen’Harel’s voice held no warmth either, but was wary.

Solas gave a small hum. “Harmless,” he muttered and finally looked down to check her palms. Her old scars were still there, but she was otherwise healed. He tried to push up to his feet, she Nox held his wrists.

“She needs to be dealt with.”

“Mythal will fix Andruil,” said Fen’Harel from behind her.

“How soon?”

“We are planning still. Perhaps a month, maybe longer.”

Nox dropped Solas and shot to her feet. “No, a month is too long. She needs to be fixed. Now.” She turned to face Fen’Harel and watched his look of bored bemusement slide from his features in the face of her concern.

“Red lyrium is dangerous and it infects her more every day. She was not like this when we arrived and it’s only been a day.” She gripped his arm. “Please. I have seen what this infection does and it will lay waste to all of Elvhenan. Take it from her. Make sure no one else can ever come in contact with it.”

His mouth pulled into a tight line and he nodded once. His hand hovered over hers where it was pressed to his arm and his fingertips brushed the back of her hand before he loped off to Mythal’s quarters.

Silence fell over the yard as she turned and looked at Solas and he looked at her. The anger had returned to his features, making him sharp and shadowed in the sunlight. He opened his mouth to speak then snapped it shut and shook his head.

“Another time,” he said.

“Why?” She wished her voice sounded less brittle. She took a breath and rolled her shoulders back. “Say what you will.”

“How could you be so careless?” he demanded and all his anger seemed to return in a flood. “Andruil could have killed you! And being alone with _him._ ”

“You mean you.” Her resolve found footing in the face of his anger and she leaned into it, bought temporary strength from his ire.

“We are very different people. You must see that.”

Nox almost snorted. They weren’t so different; too smart for their own good, steadfastly correct in all things. Then she thought of Fen’Harel’s smirk and his hair and the way confidence boldly infused everything he did. Perhaps she could.

“It would be wise is you had as little interaction with the Evanuris as possible.”

Nox crossed her arms. “And why is that?”

“When you and Dorian went into the future, you had freedom to do what you wanted because you had the chance to alter the outcome in your own time. We do not have that luxury. Any deviation from history could result in a fate far worse than what will already happen.”

“And how are they supposed to help us if we can’t speak to them? Fen’Harel is supposed to be researching a way to send us back.”

“You should stay away from him most of all.” A tightness pulled at the corners of his mouth, emphasized by the shadows cast across his cheeks in the direct sunlight.

“It’s terribly convenient that you want me to spend as little time as possible with your younger self.”

Solas’s mouth pulled into a frown and he made a sound like a swallowed scream. “Corypheus draws his power from Fen’Harel’s orb. Can you risk altering his timeline? Influencing him?”

“What if I changed something for the better?”

Solas growled and threw his hands up. “You cannot know that! You cannot do anything and know precisely the consequences. Or even guess at them!” He took a breath and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “A single conversation with you could change everything. Know that.”

Her hands closed into fists and, at a loss for anything else to do, she shrugged. She glared at the wall behind him for a long moment.

“Why did you help me?”

The anger was gone from his face when he spoke, a sad smile on his lips. “Just because you hate me does not mean the feeling is returned in kind.”

She wrapped her arms tighter around her torso to try and shield herself from that blow. It didn’t help much. It hollowed out her gut and made it feel like she was drowning.

“I would be easier if you did,” she whispered and she wished she’d looked away. His face was a storm of emotions; heart-broken, his brow bent and heavy, his lips pulled into a frown. He had no staff to grip, so his hands hung at his sides. He took a breath and when he exhaled it was like all the air left him. He sagged.

“I —” he made a sound, like a small cough before he might have laughed. Or sobbed. She couldn’t tell. “I don’t think I can.”

His confession didn’t bring tears or spark rage. Because for all her anger and bitterness, she felt it too. She wanted to hate him, she truly did. She wanted to be able to look back on moments they had spent together and feel nothing but rage. Maybe even regret. She would have settled for regret. But try and she might, she could still remember how happy she’d been. She could recall the sound of his laugh and the quiet snort he made when something particularly caught his fancy. She could trace the curve of his shoulders from memory, carve the angles of his face with ease. She knew every freckle, every mole, every spot that made him twitch or shudder or moan.

She looked away and nodded. “I know,” she said and wondered where that left them.


	9. Friendly Spirits

Andruil had left for a hunting a trip, cackling with glee at the prospect of destroying a monstrous serpent that hunted the grounds at the base of great mountain. Mythal and Fen’Harel left shortly after, armored and outfitted for battle. They’d been gone for a week, leaving Nox to her own devices in the grand estate. 

She rarely crossed paths with Solas and she chose to attribute it to the sheer size of the estate rather than his own actions. She would occasionally catch a glimpse of him in the great hall where all the elves took their meals (her meals had stopped appearing at her room shortly after Mythal’s departure), but they didn’t speak. In fact, very few people spoke to her. She caught fleeting glances from the other servants of Mythal and a few words of their hushed conversations, but no one would dare approach the construct and speak with it. 

So Nox had lots of time to herself. She spent most of it in Mythal’s study. Initially she’d been looking for anything that would help them get back to their own time, but then she’d realized there would hardly be transcripts written on a type of magic that wouldn’t exist for another thousand years, so she’d resorted to grabbing anything that looked interesting and had a growing stack that she flipped through each day. 

The servants were happy enough to leave her alone, sequestered off in one wing of the estate, and for a day or two she’d worried about going mad from the isolation. It was then that the spirits had descended upon her. Kindly, of course, but they were quite taken with her strangeness. 

“Are you sure you aren’t connected to the Fade?” one asked as Nox climbed up the fine ladder to scan a higher shelf. The spirits didn’t have traditional forms, but their shades differed and she could tell their voices apart now. 

“I’m certain. I would know if I was a mage, Inquiry.” 

“What if you’re just a late bloomer? Have you tried casting a spell?” 

Nox plucked a thin, leather-bound book from the shelf and peered at the cover. Plant and Fungi of the Ar’lethmala Region. “I’m sure. My father tried for years to make my magic appear and he had no luck.”

The incorporeal form of Inquiry twisted up and shivered. “He does not sound like a good man.”

Nox regretted telling Inquiry the whole tale of her life, but the spirit had been so curious and she’d been weak to deny some company in the breezy, billowing room. Inquiry was young as far as spirits went and was horrified by what the world would turn into. 

“You must keep trying,” said Persistence from the other side of the room. “Your work may yet still pay off.” They shifted forward and gestured to a heavy tome on the shelf nearest them.

“This one says it is about theoretical magicks. Perhaps this will help your search.”

Nox hefted the book up and said her thanks to the serious spirit-being, who nodded in return. There wasn’t much Nox could do with the advanced reading material, so she set it aside for Fen’Harel when he returned. 

“Don’t worry,” Inquiry crooned. “Pride will return soon.”

Nox’s head quirked as she regarded her small mountain of books. “I don’t think I’ve met that spirit yet,” she said absently, expecting a wordy explanation of another spirit she’d yet to encounter.

The spirit’s head tilted back and they let out a peal of laughter that sounded like wind chimes and chantry bells. “Of course you have. You came here with him, you sparred with him.” 

That made Nox pause. Solas had been Pride? With his spell still churning in her mind, the translation made sense. But that begged so many more questions. How did one go from being a spirit to having a body? Was Solas just someone possessed? Was Fen’Harel? Did possessed bodies even last that long?

She braced her hands on the desk before her. What had Mythal said? I gave you your form. 

“Solas was a spirit once?” 

Inquiry nodded happily and swooped to perch on the desk, ethereal legs swinging as they spoke. “Oh, yes. I knew him when he was a spirit. He used to spend all his time with Geldauran, planning and plotting and guiding. You see, Geldauran was planning something, but he couldn’t go gather information freely, or else his kin would know. So he called on a spirit and Pride came to help him.” Inquiry’s head tilted to one side. “Only, I guess Pride never really helped him in the end. But it was for the best, Mythal is a much better leader than Geldauran. Pride made a good choice.” 

Nox shook her head. “I don’t understand. What does Geldauran have to do with this?” He was a Forgotten One, from what she could recall. But there was so little knowledge of the Forgotten Ones left. 

“Pride worked for him! Back before the the war.”

“War?”

“Oh dear, you don’t know very much, do you?” The spirit glided up and coerced Nox into a chair. “It’s okay, I know a lot. I ask a lot of questions, too. I’ll tell you what happened.”

And so Inquiry did. For the rest of the day, Nox was given the abridged, yet rambling version of Elven history that she would have never been able to uncover in her own time. 

There had been a war many, many years ago, a war against great beasts which held the earth in place, the victory of which brought the Evanuris to the rank of godhood. And in that war, they had commanded troops and the commanders of those troops had been promised apotheosis. But the Evanuris had denied them and they grew cold and stewed in their hatred. They would have perpetuated the lies of the Evanuris, but denied their war spoils, the commanders would not stand idly by. While the Evanuris claimed divinity, these commanders knew the truth and they plotted their revenge. They called upon spirits to aid them, lest Dirthamen see them in the flesh and report back to his kin. 

Pride was one of those spirits, one of the most skilled in their ability to pull information from the elves, to ply them with compliments and adoration and gather intel. He was sent in to walk among the Evanuris, learn their secrets and was supposed to report back to Geldauran with his findings. But the spirit grew fond of the All-Mother and instead sold all his secrets to her. 

Knowing a war was brewing, the Evanuris launched a preemptive attack against their former commanders, sent them scurrying back into the Void. It was seen as a victory and Mythal gifted Pride with form as thanks for his work. 

But the commanders were not so easily defeated; they schemed and plotted and knew they needed more power to stand against the Evanuris. So they turned to darker magic and drew power from the blood of those loyal to them. They preyed upon the elves and murdered thousands at a time until they were fat with power and they assaulted the gods. 

It was a bloody war. Elves died on both sides, as sacrifices as cannon fodder, some gave their lives willingly, far, far more had their souls forcefully taken from them on the battlefield. 

Pride, in the form of a great wolf, drove the commanders back and, drawing energy from the Fade itself, forced them into the darkest corner of the Void and sealed the way behind them. 

“And now he’s Fen’Harel.” Inquiry tapped a finger against their chin in a disturbingly corporeal manner. “Though I guess he goes back to Pride eventually. Or Solas, as you know him. I wonder why.”

Nox pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. She had foolishly thought her history lessons had ended with Josephine and trying to fit thousands of years of Elven history in her mind was proving difficult. 

It was like Solas had told her. There was so much the Dalish had forgotten. The Evanuris not being gods, the vallaslin, and now this war. She wondered if she could get back to her time, if she could spread word of what she had learned…

She was fooling herself if she thought the Dalish would believe her. She understood Solas’s hesitancy to teach the Dalish now; it all sounded blasphemous and far-fetched. And she wasn’t even sure it would accomplish anything. 

“Why does Solas use that name in your time?”

Nox pulled her hands away and found Inquiry peering up at her from the ground. The spirit was sitting cross-legged before her. 

“Fen’Harel is not remembered fondly by the elves in my time.”

“But he does so much good in Mythal’s name!”

Nox thought of the tales she knew from childhood; Fen’Harel hunting kind, wise Keepers and hounds, telling an elven man to kill the king’s other daughter just so he could see a beautiful woman again. She thought of the slow arrow and his betrayal. She thought of Solas walking away from her in Crestwood. 

“History does not remember his good deeds,” she murmured. And for the first time since they’d met, Inquiry did not press for answers. 

More days passed. Another week and another still, nearly a month since Mythal and Fen’Harel had left. Resigned to her isolation, Nox began reading the tomes she had set aside for the Dread Wolf and, with the aid of spirits of Wisdom and Order, slowly started to grasp some of what was written within. Slowly.

It was difficult to wrap her head around magic when it wasn’t being drawn across the Veil. The manuscripts spoke of inherent power in everything, how one could simply think of something in the world as see it change. The magic that had sent her through time and the magic that flared in her palm drew power from ripping holes in the Veil; it was difficult to do that when there wasn’t a Veil to begin with. 

She longed suddenly for Dorian. She hadn’t expected to find a fast friend in the Tevene, but they had bonded one night over bad wine and shitty fathers and legacies they could never uphold. His knowledge of magic would been invaluable now, though she was loathe to think of what he would say about her current predicament. 

“A younger Solas?” he would quip. “I find it difficult to believe he was ever not middle-aged and miserable.” Of course, he would find the younger elf to be charming and alluring and a score of other words that would make Chantry sister blush to hear them. 

She and Dorian had fun testing the boundaries of their companions out in the field. They would exchange tales of increasingly scandalous affairs and place bets on when each member of the Inquisition would throw their hands up in disgust. 

Cullen, if he had joined them or they were gathered for a drink at the Herald’s Rest, was always first to go. He would blush the moment Nox opened her mouth and give up by the time Dorian had his first comment. 

Next was Vivienne, if she deigned to join them at all. 

It was always a toss up between Blackwall and Cassandra for the next spot. The false warden would sometimes rise to their level of nonsense if he’d taken to his cups and if the tales were skewed less toward outright vulgarity, Cassandra sometimes stuck around, if only to hear the conclusion of a romantic tale. 

Cole had no desire, so far as Nox could tell, but stuck around and laughed at the funny bits. But the kid had a tendency to ask questions about the strangest things. 

Varric was usually fine with their shenanigans until they grew even too lewd for the dwarf who wrote smut in his spare time and he would throw his hands up and mutter something about his editor. 

Iron Bull and Sera could never be turned away and Solas … well, Solas stayed for her mostly. He would watch her spin her tales, lit by firelight and emboldened by ale. And when the fires burned down to embers, he would pull her close and whisper in her ear all the things he would do to her, things that would put these silly tales to shame. His hands would slip across her shoulders and down her chest and he would bold enough to touch her in the middle of camp and he would order her to be quiet as he tortured her. 

Nox started awake and blinked into the rosy pink haze of a spirit curled on her chest. She swallowed and tried to force the flush from her cheeks as she poked at it. 

“I’m sorry!” Inquiry floated to her side. “Desire doesn’t understand personal space.” Inquiry’s green arms wrapped around the form and tugged, but the spirit remained. 

“I should stay,” they purred, coiling tighter against Nox. “She needs me.”

“I — I do not.”

“I can feel you, all wound tight and wanting.” A pink hand stroked her cheek. “I can help.” The hand trailed down, gained form and touched the skin below her collarbone. The hand was pale with long fingers and they ghosted over her breast. 

Nox shook her head and sat up, sending the spirit tumbling down to the ground. 

“No, no. I’m not sleeping with a wisp. That’s where I draw the line.”

The pink haze straightened up into a humanoid shape, limbs and torso taking shape, the planes of their face smoothing out into something familiar. 

“I can take a different form, if you wish.” Their voice was deeper, lilting across the words like they were speaking poetry and Nox turned away.

“That would be worse.” 

“Desire, leave her alone!” Inquiry all but tackled the spirit that was beginning to look familiar around the edges. Desire faded back into their pink-hued form and with a small sound of displeasure, slipped into the corridor and away from the library. 

Inquiry buzzed around her, spiritual hands fluttering around her shoulders or wringing themselves in distress. 

“Oh, I shouldn’t have gone away, I’m sorry, Nox. Are you mad? I didn’t mean for them to annoy you! I can make sure they leave you alone.” The spirit whined in worry and bobbed around. “Oh, I don’t know if you’re upset. It’s so difficult to see you like the others. Please, just tell me if you’re mad.”

“She would not have sent Desire away if she was not upset,” said Wisdom.

“She was insistent that she was left alone,” said Persistence. 

That sent Inquiry into a swirl of despair and she whined again. Nox held her hands out to still the spirit. 

“I’m fine. I’m not mad at you, Inquiry. I was just startled, that’s all.” She took a breath and managed a smile when the spirit perked up and clapped. 

“Oh, good! I couldn’t bear it if you were mad at me. I don’t know how Pride weathers it. Your glower could turn flames to ice.”

Choosing to ignore that charming turn of phrase, Nox looked out into the hall. “I thought you said spirits couldn’t take forms easily. What was Desire doing, then?”

“That’s just a trick. They weren’t really turning into an elf, they were just making their outsides look like one.” Inquiry hummed and flitted about the room. They ducked behind a curtain and let it drape across their form. It reminded Nox of when Arris would pull a sheet over his head and chase her around the camp, pretending to be ghost. 

“It’s like this, see? I’m still Inquiry inside, but my outsides are different.”

“Can you change your outsides at will?”

“It takes more skill than young Inquiry has,” Wisdom said and when Nox turned, she saw the spirit had taken the form of a hunched elf with long grey hair that spilled around their shoulders. “It is less useful than you would imagine.”

“Hey! I can do it.” Inquiry shot out from behind the curtain and stood before Nox. Their face, usually formless and translucent, swirled and began to take shape. A pair of eyes emerged first, a soft dove grey framed by dark lashes and dark brows. Then a nose and round cheeks and a mouth that was twisted into a pout of concentration. 

It was a face in some sense of the world, but made of dissimilar parts, like the features of a doll plucked and rearranged at will. Ethereal wisps swayed around their head like hair beneath water and they grinned. 

“See!” 

Nox couldn’t help but smile and tapped their cheek. “A fine face, I think.” Inquiry beamed and kept their face like that for the rest of the day, much to the surprise of anyone who saw them. 

While the rest of the spirits dispersed when Nox left the library, Inquiry followed her to the great hall and sat with her as she ate. The spirit asked about the food, where this animal came from, why they only ate some parts of this beast, how long did it take for that vegetable to grow, why was this one eaten raw and this one cooked, why did wine make people act differently, what did it taste like. Nox was happy to oblige them and told the spirit all she knew. 

“I don’t think I would like that,” they said of the meat pie Nox was currently chewing on. “Eating the flesh of an animal is one thing, but to take all of what was inside them and grind it up?” Their mouth curled into a grimace. “Some things are meant to stay on the inside. Oh, hello, Pride.”

Nox looked up to see Solas standing beside her, a small smile on his face as he looked at the spirit. 

“I haven’t gone by that name in a long time.”

“But it still clings to you.” Inquiry gestured to the space around his head. “Your spirit is still on the inside, I can see it.” 

“You’ve chosen a lovely face, Inquiry.” 

The spirit beamed. “I’m going to try for some hair tomorrow. Wisdom doesn’t think I can do it, but they never try anything new. I’m going to show them.” With that, the spirit shot up and glided away. 

Silence fell for a moment before Solas asked if he could sit. Nox made a vague noise and continued to eat. 

“Mythal will return soon, if you were wondering,” he said after a moment. He didn’t look at her, but instead focused on picking a meal from the feast laid out before them. He plucked a side of meat from a platter and set it upon his plate. 

“How do you know?”

“This is my past,” he said, carving into the meat, still not looking at her. “Thus far, we have not deviated too from history.” 

She hummed in response. Silence fell over them again, filled with the scrape of knives against plates. 

“So, you used to be a spirit.” 

“Yes.”

She took a bite of her meat pie and chewed as she considered. “How old are you?”

Solas paused for a moment and furrowed his brow. “Since gaining a body I am, I think, eight thousand, four hundred and forty-two. Before then, I cannot say for certain.”

Nox swallowed. “You think?” was all she could manage after his breezy confession. 

“Time does not hold the same importance here. We did not track years so meticulously.”

Nox took a sip of wine. “I kind of expected you to side-step an actual answer in favour of vague half-truths.”

Solas sighed and finally looked to her. “I see no harm in you knowing that I am,” he took a breath and a half smile came to his lips, “old.”

“Ancient, really.”

“Prehistoric.” 

Nox chuckled and shook her head. “This is bizarre,” she said and blew the air out of her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if she was talking about his age, their banter or the whole ordeal.

They fell into silence again and Nox smiled to herself when she thought if what Dorian would say about all this. He’d been quite distressed at the idea of Nox being with someone who was, at their estimate, around twice her age. Give or take a few thousand years, apparently. 

“I see you've become friends with Inquiry.” 

“They are endearing.” 

“I was quite fond of them, too. They’re impossibly charming once you get past all the questions.”

“So many questions!” Nox groaned and took a sip of wine. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I run out of answers.” 

“I doubt you will. You’ve lived an entire life that is so dissimilar to what Inquiry knows, you could describe grass growing in your time and they would be enthralled.” 

She chuckled at that and murmured that she would try that tomorrow. This was familiar; she could reach out and take his hand and lean against him and it would be normal. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the background din was that of Skyhold and she was dining with her companions. She could imagine they were at some point months ago, before the rift had sent her through time, before she knew who Solas truly was, before he had broken her trust. She would hardly call them simpler times, but she longed for them all the same. 

Nox opened her eyes and sighed, pushing that sadness away for a time. She slid her plate away and watched as a small girl, face marked with Mythal’s branches, scurried to take it away. Another one swept between her a Solas to deposit a fresh jug of sweet wine and Nox caught her wrist. She felt the girl jump. Her hair was a vibrant orange and was pulled back off her face in a long braid. She kept her eyes down, pale lashes pressed to her cheeks. 

“Here,” Nox said and pressed a folded napkin into her palm. It was stuffed with a meat pie, some fruit and a heel of bread from the great feast that was laid out on the table before them. 

Nox had seen what was done with the leftover food. It wasn’t given to those who served. It was wasted, hurled into pits to serve as fuel and fertilizer. 

The girl, eyes still downcast, tucked the parcel into the folds of her skirt.

“Tell Junris to come here next. Your brother needs food if he’s going to become an Arcane Warrior.” 

“Yes, ‘Ardin.” And the girl was gone a second later. When she turned back to the table, Nox caught Solas looking at her, a soft grin on his face. 

“You know if anyone catches you—”

“I’m just a silly construct who doesn’t know any better.” She was already packing another napkin, this one full of meat and hearty vegetables. Junris was a growing like a bean sprout and ate enough food to keep a small clan alive through the winter when he was able to. Nox was placing a small tart in the napkin — he was fond of sweets — when Solas reached across and placed a thick cut of venison wrapped in a steamed fern leaf on the pile. 

“The boy needs meat on his bones,” he said by way of explanation and nodded as a gangly boy with a mess of brown hair approached. He took the package from her and fixed her with a wide smile. 

“Thanks, ‘Ardin!” 

Nox tapped his cheek where a branch curled under his eye. “I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early.” 

“Tomorrow?” Solas asked once he was gone. 

“Someone has to teach him how to fight if he’s going to become a warrior.”

He h’mmed at that and took a sip of wine. Nox plucked something that resembled an orange from a stack of fruit and began to peel it. 

“What do you even do for eight thousand years? You’d run out of things to do eventually, I’d guess,” she said as she dug her thumb into the flesh. The air between them filled with the smell of citrus and freshly bloomed flowers and she peeled a wedge of blushing pink fruit free and chewed it. “Did you get bored?”

He frowned as she ate and she watched a shadow cross his face. Silence fell over them as it so often did as she watched him roll some decision over in his mind. 

It was a long moment before he came to a conclusion; Nox had nearly finished the orange that tasted like sugar-coated blossoms. 

“I was in Uthenera for nearly half my life.” 

To Nox, the term ‘long slumber’ had always brought to mind naps and sleeping in past appointments. It had been something mystical and beyond comprehension for a young elf, so it gave her pause to think of Solas asleep for almost four thousand years. 

That wasn’t sleep, she decided. That was something far greater than she had realized. 

“Is that common?” 

Solas shook his head. “Some choose to never awake from their rest. Others only rest for a short while, a decade perhaps, or a century if the task was particularly taxing.” His lips quirked at the term short and she mirrored him. Time was relative, after all. “Many who entered Uthenera did so with the intention of never waking up. They grew weary of their lives and memories and wished to be without burden. To slumber for so long and wake up was,” he looked at his hands, laced together on the table and furrowed his brow, “uncommon.”

“Were you weary?” she asked quietly. The noise in the hall began to dim as elves left to retire for the night. The torches were still warm and flickering and the great hall felt somehow intimate even when she and Solas were the only two left. Mythal’s lush curtains swallowed any echo and damped noise from the corridor beyond and this close to him, Nox could hear his quiet exhale at her question.

“Yes,” he said and it was heavy. “I had spent years, a decade, casting a spell that left me completely drained. I had planned to sleep for a time but never that long. Three thousand years,” he murmured and seemed to lose track of her, lost in his own mind. 

Nox tried to wrap her head around the magnitude of a spell that would drain him that much. It made her dizzy just to think about it. She thought back to a time when she and her companions would spend whole weeks out in the field, battling Venatori and Red Templars and dragons and Solas would remain a steady constant, always ready with a barrier or a gentle wash of healing. She’d seen him cast for far longer than either Dorian or Vivienne could manage. She could only think of a handful of time that he had truly staggered on the field. The sheer force of whatever it was that sent him into slumber was staggering. She thought suddenly of Corypheus and his ritual to tear open the sky and ascend to the heavens. 

There was a hum of magic in the air and then footsteps against marble. At the far end of the hall, seven weeks after they had left, Mythal, Fen’Harel and Andruil returned.

Mythal and Fen’Harel looked unchanged; tired, perhaps, but still gleaming in the firelight, but Andruil was a different woman. Her skin was a sun-deep gold, her hair a lush brown, her eyes gold and flickering in the light. She looked whole again and filled with sun. Even across the room, Nox could feel her power, both magical and otherwise. It emmanted from her in waves like a heartbeat. The three of them together shimmered at the perimeter when she tried to look directly at them. She wanted to attribute it to a trick of the light. 

“Sleep, daughter, and we will celebrate your return in the morning.” Mythal touched Andruil’s cheek, a vision of motherly, beatific love. Andruil nodded and bounded off, leaving Mythal and Fen’Harel to approach the only two elves left in the hall. 

“Come with me,” she said and all the motherly warmth was gone in an instant. “Both of you.” Without breaking stride, she marched past them to a door behind the head table, leaving them all to funnel in behind her. 

She spun and stopped Fen’Harel at the frame. “Rest, my wolf. You fought well, you deserve a restful sleep.”

He bowed his head and, casting a quick glance up at her through his lashes, retreated back to the main hall. 

The All-Mother shut the door behind him and turned. “You will tell me how you knew my daughter was ill and you will tell me what it was that infected her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hi, thanks for your patience with this chapter! Life totally got in the way for a little bit, but I'm back with a pretty long one and have the rest of this bad boy outlined. Thanks for reading!


	10. The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, life got out of hand. But I'm back and working on this fic again. We're getting to the good stuff!

Nox had been interrogated before. By Orleasian nobles across formal dining tables, dressed in lace and silks and velvet; kindly by Josephine, to teach her about how her own words could be twisted against her; in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, on her knees, bound at the wrist. 

Before then too, by Antivian nobles and spymasters, Rivaini lords and queens. They had used interesting methods then. Fire, water, pain. But Barter had trained her well and she’d never broken. No, the greatest retired Guildmaster in all of Thedas was still tucked away in his Lowtown hovel, safe from those who would harm him. Because he had trained his last apprentice well. 

So she wasn’t scared of being questioned. She’d been questioned before. But never by a god. It was the god part that gave her pause. Because even if they weren’t truly gods, even if the woman before her was simply a powerful mage, she was powerful beyond anything Nox had faced before. Stronger than dragons, stronger than Venatori, stronger than Corypheus. 

She took a breath and remembered her training, both from Barter and Josephine, and squared her shoulders. 

“She was tainted from her time in the Abyss.” Solas spoke before she could draw a breath and Mythal waved his words from the air with a flick of her wrist. 

“I know your story, Pride. I would hear hers.”

Nox looked between them and frowned. “They’re just stories. Fables, legends, far removed from the truth.” She gestured to Solas. “His accounts would be closer to reality.”

“I am disinterested in truth. History doesn't care for truth. I want to know what endures.” Mythal marched to her desk and poured herself a small crystalline goblet of wine. “Begin with my daughter.” 

So Nox did. She recounted as many stories as she could remember. She spoke of the madness which took hold of Andruil and how they had found red lyrium in her time. She explained Dagna’s findings; how red lyrium was lyrium with the Blight, that lyrium was a living thing. 

Satisfied with that, Mythal asked about the other Evanuris and Nox did her best to recall the legends. It felt somehow blasphemous to recount the tales of the gods to one who would yet live through them and another who already had. She wondered how much she got wrong. A great deal, if her conversations with Solas were to be trusted. 

Her recollections were hazy and fragmented. She could only recall the broad strokes, the archetypes. Nox half shrugged. 

“I was young when I left my clan and a poor student besides. I spent more time in the Chantry than I spent praying to the Creators.” 

“Fascinating,” Mythal murmured. “It would at least answer why you seem so at ease among those your people have named gods. And this Maker, this human god, you believed in him.” 

“I tried to. For a week, maybe more. I mostly didn't believe in anything. Why bother asking a god to fix your problems when you could do it yourself?” 

“How terribly practical.” 

Her lack of “elfyness,” as Sera would call it, made her race easier to swallow as Inquisitor. Maybe it was practical to believe in physical things, in facts and blades and blood. It was easier than believing some human man or a family of elven gods would let atrocities brew and fester. Why would the Creators let their people submit to slavery? Why would the Maker stand for mages being locked in stone cages? It was easier to fault real people with blood in their veins than something that lived beyond the sky. 

Mythal swirled her wine and narrowed her eyes at Nox, considering. Nox met the stare head on.

“I’ll admit, I’m disappointed with how little of us remains in the future. Whether that is simply a poor reflection of you or your entire people, I am unsure.” 

Nox almost rolled her eyes; once again she was the delegate for all modern elves. Three times she’d been their ambassador: as Inquisitor, as Solas’s target for snide remarks and now as a repository for Mythal’s disappointment. 

“Perhaps it’s a reflection of you. Slaves don’t remember their masters fondly.” 

The goddess smirked. “Is that what you think this is?”

“I’ve yet to see evidence to the contrary.”

“Then you’re lucky, girl, that I claimed you before any of my beloved family did.” She finished her wine, placed the goblet to one side and leaned against the desk, striking a pose that was too casual, relaxed and human for someone referred to as the All-Mother. “Pride,” she said and turned to Solas, whose face was a mask of calm, but Nox could see the telltale furrow in his brow that spoke of more. “Tell me again what happens.”

His gaze flicked to Nox for a heartbeat. Then he began.

“You leave with Fen’Harel soon to check on the other gods. What happened with Andruil makes you worry about your other children so you go to check on them. It takes months, but you visit them each in turn. During these stays, he begins to see how the other Evanuris treat their faithful. They know you are fond of your worshippers and treat theirs well when they are in your halls, but in the comfort of their own homes, they are brutal.

“While you speak to your children and husband, he speaks with the elves, hears their stories, tells them that they are more than just thralls to the gods. He plants the seeds of rebellion then. 

“Before you return to your temple, you venture below the earth to gather power. You know your family well and could sense the unease even as you tried to calm it. You and Fen’Harel find a pillar of the earth and kill it. You give Fen’Harel his foci, created from that beast.”

“Foci are made from titans?” Nox asked. 

“Don’t interrupt,” Mythal snapped and the shadows in the room swelled. “I gave him the foci as a weapon for the coming war?” 

Solas nodded. “By the time you return home, Falon’din has started war to amass followers. Peaceful times are dull for the god of death. A war begins and you rally the other gods against him. All the worshippers are on the front lines and they are cut down without hesitation on both sides. That is the final straw for him. He removes his vallaslin and amidst the war begins a rebellion. 

“The Evanuris kill you as punishment for your general’s disobedience.”

“And then he pushes back the sky,” Mythal finished. 

Nox’s eyes unfocused as she tried to piece everything together. Solas had created the Veil. She looked to him and met his gaze. It was raw and she knew that speech had been his confession. She watched some small frisson of tension release from his jaw and shoulders and she felt, at last, that they were on equal footing. This was the whole truth laid bare before her. 

Part of her was relieved. Part of her was in awe of the man she’d once called love. She found she was empty of anger for now. She could not draw up the energy to angry at him again. 

Things began to slide into place in her mind; she could understand his gallows humour in the face of a disaster of his doing. It wasn’t just that he was old and had seen everything, he had entirely fucked it up along the way and was helpless to change it while he recovered. 

“Oh,” she breathed and that small sound unwound something in his chest and he sagged. 

Mythal had refilled her goblet and was tapping a finger against the glass when she broke whatever spell had fallen over Nox. “This is good. We can get ahead of history now. You say I take my general, but I shall take you instead. It is not too far from the truth, after all.” She smirked. 

“I will go with you,” Solas said. 

“Wait, what? You can’t do that.” 

Mythal turned to look at Nox and pursed her wine-stained lips. “And why can’t I?”

“Because you’ll change something if you deviate from history. Stopping Fen’Harel from seeing how the elves are treated would change everything.” She looked to Solas for support, but he would not meet her eye. She looked back to the goddess and paused. “That’s the point,” she muttered.

“I would like to keep myself alive. And if I can keep my family from being locked in the Fade, all the better.” She finished her wine in a single gulp and pushed away from the desk. “Rest, Pride. I will come for you in the morning and we will discuss our plans.” She strode to Nox. “You will stay here. You may stay in the rooms I have afforded you if you remain out of our way. Else you will find yourself somewhere much less accommodating.”

They were released with a wave and Nox stumbled from the room after Solas. 

There was a moment of tense silence before Nox turned to him, her eyes screwed shut. “I thought you said we couldn’t deviate from history, that we couldn’t predict the outcomes.”

“That was before I had time to think, before I could see it for myself.”

“So, now you’re, what? Going to try and rewrite history?” She wiped a hand across her face and opened her eyes to see him before her, eyes pleading. 

“I have to try. At the very least I have to try.”

“What if you make it worse?”

“There is nothing worse than what I awoke to.”

She didn’t expect that to sting as much as it did. She took a step back from him. “And if you succeed? And Arlathan never falls? What then? My people, dead. My future, gone.”

Solas grabbed her arms and held her. “You could stay here, live here, free. No Inquisition, no Corypheus.” His eyes were nearly desperate as they searched hers. 

“Why would I stay here? I’m alone, no friends, no family. This world isn’t meant for me, why would I consider staying?” 

His grip on her tightened and she paused. 

Oh, of course.

Why would he stay in her time when it was so obviously not for him? Why would he live among people who reminded him of his failures? She slid from his grasp and wrapped her arms around herself.

“So, this is it? My world for yours? Varric, Cassandra, Dorian; you’d sacrifice them all for this world?” 

“They might still exist—”

“Not as we knew them.” She looked away from him and deeper into the hall. Long shadows stretched across the floor from the few torches that still flickered in the walls. The marble beneath her feet felt cold. “I don’t get it, Solas. Freeing the elves, rebelling against the Evanuris, you did that, you _wanted_ to do that. Are you really going to try and stop him from doing it? You’re going to let those elves live their lives in servitude, die as expendable lives in a war for glory?” 

His brow furrowed and he looked down at the space between them. “I don’t know. There has to be another way.” He spoke softly, voice barely above a whisper.

“You told me that every alternative was worse.” 

“I know,” he breathed and he sounded like a broken man. He straightened and opened his mouth to speak. But he looked at her and thought better of it and with a small bow of his head, took his leave. 

Alone, Nox took a breath and collapsed to sit on the steps at the head of the table. She pressed her brow to her knees and tried to think straight. 

Even if she could try and steer history back on course, even if she could thwart Mythal and Solas, even if she could survive the rebellion, would it matter? Could she make it home? And what if she did and something had changed? Would she remember what had happened originally or would she only recall the new, altered past? 

Solas had made his opinion clear. If there was some way to get them home, she would be going alone. What would that mean for the Inquisition? She had relied on him so heavily in the field. There would have been some poetic justice in having Solas fight Corypheus. But that would never come to pass. 

She tried to imagine a modern Thedas where the elves had never fallen. She tried to imagine an elf on the throne in Orlais. Mages would be free, she figured, if Andrastism had never gotten a foothold. Magic would be everywhere. She wondered if that would change the type of man her father had been. If magic wasn’t such a rare commodity, would he have had room in his heart for her as she was? Arris would still be alive, she figured. And she would have been able to grow up with her blood brothers instead of seeing them sent off to other clans. 

But if Arris was alive and her father had accepted her then she would have never gone to Kirkwall. She would have never met Rook or Barter or Varric. Cullen would just be some man she didn’t know. 

Without the Veil, the Breach would never happen. The Inquisition would never be formed. Dorian would stay in Tevinter, Iron Bull and the Chargers would never pledge to them. She would never meet the Friends of Red Jenny. She would never meet Solas.

She hugged her knees tighter. She couldn’t give it up. Even if it cost her Arris and her father’s love; she lost them before, she could do it again. But to lose all those who had given their lives for her, pledged their blades … she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let that world slip away. 

She heard the soft sound of feet on the marble before her and blinked up. Among the shifting shadows in the room was Fen’Harel, unchanged from earlier in the night. She could trace a tense line across his shoulder, one that began in one clenched fist and ended in the other. When he spoke, his voice was clipped. 

“Do they truly remember me as the Betrayer?”

“History to unkind to many.”

“Everything I did — will do, forgotten? Labelled as treachery?” His voice broke on the last word and she remembered just how young he was in the grand scheme of things. “I pledged my life to Mythal, betrayed the Gods I had once walked among for the Evanuris and they paint me as a traitor. They kill Mythal.” He let out a shuddering breath. 

“I’m sorry,” Nox said and it felt useless on her tongue. She wanted to comfort him, but she had nothing to offer. Not when she knew it would have to happen for her world to remain. But she didn’t want the man before her to feel this pain. She pushed up to stand before him and took his tense hands in her own. The magic in her left hand swelled in response. 

“There are thousands of years left to change the legends my people have gotten wrong.” She looked past the vallaslin and at the man beneath. She prayed what he said was true. She hoped there was another way. 

His gaze was flinty as he glared at the wall behind her. He was missing the small scar above his brow, but it furrowed all the same. The firelight cast his face in long shadows, made his cheeks seem sharper, his lips a thin line of resentment. He was stiff and tense, but he did not pull away when she leaned in. 

“You don’t deserve the burden of your destiny,” she said softly in the firelight and he finally turned his gaze to her. It was hot, filled with anger and sorrow and frustration. He didn’t nod, didn’t blink, but a breath shuddered out of him. She thumbed the back of his hand and squeezed once. 

Nox let go and slipped past him to return to her chambers. 

The sky beyond her window was a deep purple-blue, the barest hints of light beginning to stretch across the land as the morning came. She didn’t realize how late she had been talking to Solas and then Mythal. She rubbed her eyes. It was probably for the best; she didn’t want to risk dreaming and running into Solas.

She figured she had just enough time to eat before Junris was expecting her, so she quickly changed out of her robes and into the armor she’d taken months ago. Crouching, she gathered her blades from beneath her bed and headed out for the kitchens.

The estate was quiet in the early hours; anyone who was awake moved gently through the morning fog and dew like spirits. There was nary a sound in the great marbles halls and corridors, but down the stairs behind the dining hall was a different story. 

A thick wooden door sat at the bottom of the stairwell and did well to block most of the noise coming from within. Nox pulled it open just enough to slip inside and inhaled deeply. The smell of butter and bread and stewing fruit filled her nose. It was warm down here from all the hearths and fires and bubbling pots of porridge and stew, and loud. Elves of all ages worked in a seamless choreography, hauling platters of fruit across the room, or shaping soft rounds of dough into loaves for breakfast. They all had some variation of Mythal’s vallaslin on their face, but those faces were filled with smiles and laughter lines. They spoke freely down here and a few familiar faces nodded to Nox when she approached.

“Keep your paws off those scones!” Adalva said and brandished a wooden spoon in her direction. Nox retracted her hands.

“But I need something for the road. I’m off to train Junris this morning.” 

“Hah!” a voice cried from over a hearth in the far corner. “Give her as much as she wants. That boy is trouble enough on a full stomach.” 

“Now, now, that’s my son you’re talking about,” a male elf with short brown hair approached with his arms crossed. He wore an apron that was covered in flour and had a smear of it across one cheek. He reached around Nox and plucked two fresh scones from the tray and placed them in her hands. “Best of luck to ya,” he said with a wink and then spun around to face Adalva’s wrath. Nox slipped away and grabbed a peach from a basket of fruit. Arms full of breakfast and her blades sheathed at her back, she pushed open a door on the opposite side of the bustling kitchen and emerged in a small orchard filled with beautiful, tall trees that smelled like the hottest day of summer and blossoms and fresh sap. 

Nox found a tree with bright yellow flowers and climbed up into the boughs to enjoy her breakfast before her training began. Leaning against the trunk, legs dangling down in the breeze made her think of home, her first home. She remembered climbing trees with Arris and hiding from their father until he was blue in the face from yelling at them. She had always been fast, but she’d developed the ability to nearly disappear into the canopy of a forest at a young age. While the rest of the hunters in her clan stalked on the ground where their prey could feel their approach, she kept to the boughs and shot from above. 

Arris said she had an adventurous spirit. Deshanna said she had a death wish. Maybe they were both right.

Nox tucked into the scones, still warm from the oven and buttery. When those were nothing but crumbs she bit into the peach and watched the sunrise as it peaked over the soft hills in the distance. If she squinted, she could just make out the shimmer of the ocean just along the horizon and she thought of Rook and longed for a ship. She wondered in ancient elves sailed. 

“ ‘Ardin, you there?” Junris called, his wooden sword dragging on the grass behind him. The wooden sword had been a gift from his father when he discovered what Nox was doing. He’d blanched at the idea of his son training with the real thing. 

Nox dropped the peach pit on his head and jumped down from her spot. 

“Yeah, squirt, let’s go. I’ve been waiting all morning for you.” Nox went to ruffle his hair but he ducked away.

“I’m almost as tall as you,” he said while he fixed his hair. He wasn’t wrong. Nox was short for an elf of her time, which made her quite small in comparison to the elves of Arlathan.

“But only half as good looking,” Nox quipped. They marched through the trees to a small clearing and she turned to face him, arms crossed. “What do you remember from your last lesson?”

“Never stand still. Keep you weight in your toes. Big swords need room to move, so don’t get stuck,” he recited dutifully. 

Nox nodded and unsheathed one of her blades. She sank into a fighting stance and began tracing the motions Barter had trained into her. Blade in front, point raised, swing back across the right shoulder, slice up, swing back across the left shoulder, back to centre. The burn in her muscles was familiar and welcome and made her think of days spent in his cramped hovel, waving around a wickedly sharp blade and strict instructions to not break anything. The tiny home she and Barter had shared forced her to learn how to maneuver in tight spaces. Perhaps it wasn’t a skill that Junris needed to learn, but it was one that gotten her out of many sticky situations.

“I want you to do that forty times, okay?”

“Forty!”

“Do you think your attackers will give you a break when you get tired?” Nox asked. “And I don’t want to see any wild swings. You have to be in control of your blade at all times. If you know exactly where your sword is, it can’t be used against you.” She stood across from him and with a nod, they began. 

They moved in sync, her motions sharper than his, but he was quiet and focused, even when she saw his arms start to shake. It was a warm day in the height of summer and by the time they reached forty they were both damp with sweat. Nox planted the tip of her sword in the grass and wiped a hand across her brow.

“Good. How are your arms?”

Junris gave his arms a little shake. “Fine,” he said and Nox quirked a brow at him. “I’m not tired,” he insisted. He hefted his sword up and brandished it at her. “I can keep going, come on.”

Nox considered insisting they take a break, but Junris was headstrong and wouldn’t listen even if she said it was for the best. Besides, she thought as she plucked her sword free, the best teachers always kept their students humble. 

She tapped the edge of his sword, a playful taunt and he responded by starting to pace around in a small circle. She granted him a small grin; he’d been paying attention. He shifted and swung his sword back to cut up across her torso. But his arms quivered when he tried to lift the sword past parallel and she knocked it back down with a flick of her wrist. 

“Rest, Junris. We’ll keep training in a bit.”

“I said I’m fine,” he ground out and stabbed, forcing Nox a step back. Surprised, she rolled onto the balls of her feet and knocked his sword aside. He settled back into his stance and they paced around each other.

He was tired, which meant his sword was slow. But it also left his upper half mostly defenceless since he couldn’t raise his blade fast enough to protect himself. She feinted a stab up at his face, but ducked under his arm when he sluggishly tried to haul his sword up. Behind him, she grabbed his sword arm and with a well-placed jab, forced him to drop the dummy sword. She pressed the flat of her blade to his throat. 

“Still fine?” she asked and she could feel the teenage embarrassment coming off him in waves. She pressed a quick kiss to his mop of hair and released him. 

“Gross,” he muttered as he all but ran away from her, mortified. 

“Will you take a break now?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” He flopped down onto the ground with his arms crossed. 

Nox chuckled to herself and shook the branches of a nearby tree until a handful of shiny yellow apples fell. She tossed one to Junris and bowed her head at his mumbled thanks.

“How did you learn all this stuff, anyway?” he asked around a mouthful of mashed apple once he had finished being grumpy. 

Nox folded her legs under her and sat across from him. “When I was fifteen a retired assassin found me in a jail cell and offered to train me.”

“Halla shit.”

“Language, Junris.”

“I don’t believe it. Why would he take you in?” He munched on his apple and spat out a handful of seeds. “Why were you arrested?”

“I tried to kill a man,” she whispered and laughed when his eyes went wide. “I wasn’t very good at it, which I guess is why he took me in.” 

“How long did you train for?”

“Ten years. And then I went home and my sister sent me on a very special mission. And, well, then I ended up here.”

Junris considered that as he finished his apple, frowning at the tree behind her. “Wait. So, you’re, what, twenty-six years old?” He blinked at her like she was some new specimen suddenly. “I was still a baby when I was twenty-six.”

“You still are a baby,” Nox shot back, flicking an apple seed at him. “How old are you?”

“Six hundred and seventeen,” he said with his chest puffed up and Nox scrunched up her nose. Being a teenager for hundreds of years sounded awful. 

“I don’t know why I’m taking lessons from you,” he continued. “I’m way older than you.”

“Age doesn’t equal expertise, Junris.” 

He thought about that for a moment and sobered, looking down at his hands. Nox wondered if that sentiment held the same value when people lived forever, if it held more. When weighed against wisdom of time immemorial, could there truly be a new perspective? When there were decades to debate, was there ever a point left unraised? 

Shaking the thought from her head, Nox stood and wiped her hands on her trousers. “If you’re willing to take lessons from a child, I’d say we’ve rested long enough.”

He pushed up to his feet and took up his wooden sword again and they went through the basic motions of attack. 

For his part, Junris was a good student. Attentive and driven and Nox quickly discovered that if she told him something was too advanced for the current lesson he would focus in and learn it before the hour was through. 

She’d never be trained to use a longsword, but she could teach him the basics of combat and hope that someone would fill in the blanks down the line. 

“How does one become an Arcane Warrior?” she asked as he practiced his over hand slashes. 

“We’re chosen once we come of age.” He grunted and hacked down at Nox’s head. She deflected and tapped his left shoulder with the flat of her blade. 

“Don’t lift from there, you’ll tire yourself out. Draw your strength up from your legs and through your core.” They reset and he attacked again, this time with enough strength to send a shiver down Nox’s arms when their blades met. “When do you come of age?”

“One thousand,” said Junris.

“And to think I thought I was spoiled with ten. Four hundred years of training and you’ll be unstoppable.”

“That’s just to get chosen. Most Warriors don’t see battle for another hundred years after that.” He drew his sword up again and it came crashing down against Nox’s blade. “I’ll be Mythal’s best Warrior, just you wait.”

Nox was struck suddenly by the vision of him on a field soaked in blood, sword at the ready. Six hundred years or not, he was too young for that. She looked at his gangly limbs, all elbows and knees and freckles; too young by a long shot.

The air beside her ear hissed and she ducked aside just as the wooden sword came crashing down into the grass. Without hesitating, he swiped up at her as she leapt back. She parried his attack and locked her blade against his. 

“Always press your advantage,” he said with a smirk and it was strange to hear her own advice parroted back to her without prompt. But she laughed and slashed at him, forcing him a step back. He side stepped her next attack and stabbed at her side, but Nox grabbed his wooden sword by the blade and tugged it from his grip.

“Not fair!”

“Isn’t it?” Nox gripped her own weapon by the blade and tapped his cheek with the handle. “Maybe one day I’ll let you play with the real swords.”

Lightning fast, Junris grabbed the handle of her sword and twisted. Nox let it fall into his grip and grinned at him.

“Well done.”

They both turned to see Fen’Harel leaning against a nearby tree, the half-formed shape of Inquiry beside him. Today they had long black hair that flowed out behind them like a river, tossed in an absent breeze, but their face was as it had been since they had first shaped it. Round cheeks and grey eyes and a bright smile. 

“I was intrigued when Inquiry told me you were training one of the boys.” He spoke with the barest hint of a smile in his voice, a far cry from the state he’d been in last night. 

Beside her, Junris dropped her sword and bowed his head.

Fen’Harel approached and looked over Junris. The Dread Wolf was wearing more casual garb than she’d seen before, though it was still a far cry from minimal. He wore a thin tunic of soft black and muted grey leg wraps. A simple cloth sash was tied around his hips and his usually glittering jewelry had been swapped out for simple black bars. 

“Come here, boy,” he said not unkindly and Junris took a step towards him. “The Arcane Warriors who pledge themselves to Mythal are under my command, do you know that?”

“Yes, sir.” 

Fen’Harel lifted the boy’s chin and looked him over. His knuckles were flushed, new bruises already forming. Nox’s heart clenched at the sight. He was so young, so full of heart and hurt and ill-equipped to face the pain she’d placed at his feet. 

“You’ve got a good teacher.” The Wolf’s eyes landed on her and he raised a brow. “An unorthodox choice, perhaps, but a good one.” 

Nox swallowed and his gaze flickered for a moment to her throat before he focused back on the boy before him. She blinked and shook her head and went about gathering her swords. 

“Go on,” Fen’Harel said, “I must speak with your teacher.” 

Junris glanced back at her and took off only once she had nodded at him, wooden sword tucked under his arm. 

Nox righted herself to see him standing a few feet from her, gaze focused on the trees behind her. There were dull shadows under his bloodshot eyes. She wanted to tell him to get some rest; it had never worked on his elder counterpart. She suspected the man before her would react similarly. 

“Did you manage to rest?” she asked. 

He shook his head. “You?” 

“No.” Nox sheathed her blades. She stood before him, willed him to look at her and not at whatever darkness loomed on the horizon. The intense sorrow in his gaze, the weight of choices beyond his control, was too similar to Solas. It made her heart clench to see it. There should be thousands of years between now and when that weight settled upon him. She was responsible for that sadness so she would do everything to scatter if to the wind. 

"Take me to Arlathan," she said, standing in path of his gaze.

That snapped him from his trance. “What?” 

“I've never seen it. There’s legends in my time, tales that it was the greatest city ever built, that the whole city was built into the trees. I want to see it for myself.” 

“It’s just a city,” he said, a hair away from petulant. 

“I don't have cities built with magic. And I certainly don't have one's built into the trees. It's a marvel in my time.” She took a step closer and brushed her fingers against his palm. 

She couldn't bring herself to take his hand. She had to tell herself that the uneven beat of her heart was simply because he was hurting, that she wanted to only comfort him. Touching his hand was a show of support. Taking ahold of it was something else. 

She almost believed it. If she didn't think too deeply. Almost. 

“Please,” she said and his stormy eyes finally met hers and it hurt so much to see anguish in them. Like a barely healed scab, like salt in a wound, like a thousand failings. 

“Oh, yes, please!” Inquiry burst between them, a fizzy cloud of shifting green and grey and freckles. “It’ll be fun! I wonder …” Inquiry broke off a squeezed their eyes shut, their whole face screwing up in concentration. They shimmered around the edges as arms and legs began to take shape at their extremities. They were hazy at the edges if Nox looked for too long, but at a quick glance, the spirit before her was an elf. They had hands and fingers and toes that curled against the grass. 

“Oh, cool!” Inquiry said as they marveled at the back of their hand. 

The barest of smiles graced Fen’Harel’s face as he watched them ooh and aah over their new form. 

“Okay,” he said like a sigh. “To Arlathan.”


End file.
